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It’s no secret that this has been a terrible summer for sports fans. I know that the WNBA\u00a0and\u00a0pro golf\u00a0are rolling merrily along right now\u2014and I love watching the Little League World Series kiddos sob and flail in shallow outfields\u2014but 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\u00a0Aaron Rodgers\u00a0won’t play so horribly that the city will impose martial law by season’s end?<\/p>\n
Lo and behold, I had an unlikely savior (not ayahuasca, sorry Aaron): the Dallas Cowboys. In a new docuseries titled\u00a0America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,\u00a0filmmakers Chapman and Maclain Way (who you may remember for 2018’s superb cult documentary\u00a0Wild Wild Country) cook up a\u00a0Last Dance\u2013esque\u00a0portrait of the ’80s- and ’90s-era Cowboys dynasty. All eight episodes premiere on Netflix today.<\/p>\n
In an era when just about every sports documentary doubles as hero worship for the athlete producing it (ahem,\u00a0Kermit Mahomes), I need you to know that this is the best sports docuseries we’ve had since, well,\u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n If\u00a0The Gambler and His Cowboys\u00a0<\/em>features a protagonist (or\u00a0antagonist<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n Say what you want about Jones\u2014the documentary wants you to decide for yourself whether the man is a genius or a car salesman\u2014but 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\u00a0great documentarian Greg Whiteley\u00a0to AT&T Stadium. Nowadays, I’m sure they could’ve just produced their own Cowboys propaganda, omitting, say,\u00a0Irvin’s 1996 court case\u00a0from the final edit.<\/p>\n I doubt it. But so long as documentaries like\u00a0The Gambler and His Cowboys<\/em>\u00a0exist, 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s no secret that this has been a terrible summer for sports fans. I know that the WNBA\u00a0and\u00a0pro golf\u00a0are rolling merrily along right now\u2014and I love watching… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":80984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"yoast_head":"\n\n\nCourtesy of Netflix<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\nIt’s a treat to enjoy some face time with Troy Aikman outside of the broadcast booth.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n