It’s no secret that this has been a terrible summer for sports fans. I know that the WNBA and pro golf are rolling merrily along right now—and I love watching the Little League World Series kiddos sob and flail in shallow outfields—but overall it’s been pretty damn bad. What’s a Pittsburgh sports fan supposed to do in the middle of August? Pore over Steelers training-camp reports for signs that Aaron Rodgers won’t play so horribly that the city will impose martial law by season’s end?
Lo and behold, I had an unlikely savior (not ayahuasca, sorry Aaron): the Dallas Cowboys. In a new docuseries titled America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys, filmmakers Chapman and Maclain Way (who you may remember for 2018’s superb cult documentary Wild Wild Country) cook up a Last Dance–esque portrait of the ’80s- and ’90s-era Cowboys dynasty. All eight episodes premiere on Netflix today.
In an era when just about every sports documentary doubles as hero worship for the athlete producing it (ahem, Kermit Mahomes), I need you to know that this is the best sports docuseries we’ve had since, well, The Last Dance. I’ll even give you a lofty, Jerry Jonesian promise: It’s so good that it’ll save your miserable sports summer too.
If The Gambler and His Cowboys features a protagonist (or antagonist, depending on how you feel about the man), it’s Jerry Jones. Football loyalists are painfully familiar with the longtime Cowboys owner. Now a sprightly 82 years old, Jones is a three-time Super Bowl winner, but he hasn’t hoisted the Lombardi trophy since 1996. He was also a key figure in modernizing the business of the NFL, even if he often did so at the expense of others. Some owners hate his ways and some love ’em, but you can’t argue that the man doesn’t have business acumen. He turned a $140 million purchase into a $5.5 billion sports franchise.
Say what you want about Jones—the documentary wants you to decide for yourself whether the man is a genius or a car salesman—but you have to give him credit for giving access to a journalistically pristine duo like the Way brothers. In fact, the Jones family did the same thing with the Cowboys cheerleaders doc, inviting the great documentarian Greg Whiteley to AT&T Stadium. Nowadays, I’m sure they could’ve just produced their own Cowboys propaganda, omitting, say, Irvin’s 1996 court case from the final edit.
I doubt it. But so long as documentaries like The Gambler and His Cowboys exist, I’ll stay relentlessly optimistic. I’ll channel Jerry Jones’s energy as he prays for a fourth Super Bowl ring at the beginning of Cowboys training camp.
