Finding the meaning of life in a meaningless Dallas Cowboys preseason game | Opinion
The game was forgotten five minutes after kickoff, and when I am on my deathbed it will be the greatest football game I have ever attended.
Sitting in JerryWorld with my 12-year-old daughter, Vivian, to watch the Jaguars and Cowboys on Sunday to conclude the 2021 fake season will ultimately be more memorable than the Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup Finals, NBA Finals or Olympics.
The search for the meaning of life is a fruitless quest with no answer, but I found some of it in a meaningless NFL preseason game.
When it’s time to go, these are the parts I’ll cherish the most.
The last time I attended a Dallas Cowboys game “as a fan” was Sept. 15, 1996, at Texas Stadium. I was quite the Colts fan at the time, and I sat there in a painful sun watching with one of my older brothers, Michael.
The Colts won, only because the Cowboys missed a game-winning field goal on the game’s final play, which prompted my brother and I to hug as if the game actually mattered.
The game didn’t matter. That moment did.
Sunday’s preseason game really didn’t matter, but something as disposable as an NFL exhibition provides the chance for something more meaningful than anything else.
We can bathe our kids in stuff, the latest Xbox game, the newest shoes and the coolest outfits. What they really just want from us is the one thing we can’t buy.
Time.
(Yes, I am aware the time is coming when she will want my money a lot more than my time.)
With all due respect to Babe Laufenberg, Tony Romo, Troy Aikman and the other color analysts of today, my daughter’s commentary during this game exceeds them all.
Between the casual curiosity towards the game, and the fascination with the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, this was the most entertaining preseason game in NFL history.
“I guess Miller Lite really likes the Dallas Cowboys,” she said.
Not as much as the Dallas Cowboys love Miller Lite.
“They only have four banners?” she asked, looking at the Cowboys’ Super Bowl banners.
“They have five,” I said. “What kind of math are they teaching you at that school of yours?”
“Oh my God. Look at how long it’s been since then won! 1995?!” she said while making no effort to suppress her laughter. “That’s such a long time ago.”
She’s been alive since 2009. Poor thing has no idea of what “a long time ago” feels like.
Another detail she didn’t miss, the difference between Jacksonville Jaguars rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence, and Cowboys backups quarterbacks Cooper Rush and Garrett Gilbert.
“Wow, he’s really not good,” she said after another blah Cowboys’ offensive series in the first half. Not sure which Cowboys quarterback she was referring to because after Dak Prescott they seamlessly blend together.
She was quite taken with the videos on the JumboTron.
“I think they spend more time on these videos than they do getting ready for the games,” she said.
I had to explain to her that the crew who creates the videos for the JumboTron aren’t the coaches or players.
She wondered how NFL players, in their uniforms, are able to scratch themselves in certain areas. Fair question.
Her real interest focused on an element to the game I was not prepared: The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
As we tried to locate our seats, she asked to stop to watch the most famous cheerleading group in America perform its signature kick line and jump splits before the game.
Thanks to the endless rabbit hole that is YouTube, she has watched segments of “Making the Team,” the reality series on CMT about the Dallas Cowboys’ cheerleaders.
“Do you ever watch the cheerleaders?” she asked me.
I couldn’t lie to her.
“No,” I said.
“Those outfits look so uncomfortable,” she asked. “How do they fit into those?”
Such a simple question, and yet even the world’s most esteemed scientists cannot agree on the answer.
Then we proceeded to speculate whose hair required extensions, who was tanning, and why they aren’t being thrown into the air, doing somersaults and other stunts.
Without warning she asked, “Do you know how Gummy Bears taste round’?”
Yes, “round” is a taste.
The end of the first quarter came, referee John Hussey said over the public address system, “This is the end.” He waited an abnormally long time before finishing the thought, “... of the first quarter.”
“That was very dramatic,” she said. “’This is the end ... of the world.’”
Bemoaning how fast time moves is hard to avoid. I’m just grateful to have this time, because like everything else it’s all temporary.
It’s not about the time that’s gone. It’s about how you spent, and spend, the time you have.
In this case, the time was a meaningless preseason game that provided the answer to the meaning of life.
