Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-US PRESSWIRE
Sports fans are a rabid and passionate people when it comes to the teams they love. Nothing shows that more so than the sheer volume a stadium gets to when the home team is in the building. Troy Aikman, who won a handful of Super Bowls in front of rocking crowds of Cowboys fans, is claiming that this idea of home field advantage doesn’t exist ever existed in Dallas.
Aikman went on KTCK-AM 1310 The Ticket to voice his honesty about what it’s really like to play in Dallas.
“I don’t think Dallas has ever really had a great home field advantage. What I’ve heard is ‘Wow, they really lost home field advantage when they left Texas Stadium’. Texas Stadium really wasn’t that different. Having played playoffs games in Texas Stadium, that stadium was rocking it was great. …But when we would play in Philadelphia. New York and walk out of the tunnel, I would have to be yelling at the top of my lungs for guys to hear me.”
Now Fox’s top NFL analyst typically paired with Joe Buck when Buck isn’t calling postseason baseball games, played his entire career with the Cowboys and is a fan favorite among die-hards and casual fans alike. But Aikman said in his interview that the line between die-hards and casual fans really isn’t that distinct. Aikman stopped short of saying Dallas fans are fait weather fans but heavily implied that Dallas isn’t the sports town it claims it is.
“I didn’t know anybody who went to Rangers games, then when they started winning and going to the World Series, everybody’s wearing Rangers hats. …fans don’t want to hear this — a lot of people that attend sports in this town, they’re there because it’s kind of just a place to be seen.”
This seems to be the case for most NBA games where it’s as much about who’s court-side at the Lakers or Thunder game as it is about Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant actually playing. Aikman doesn’t seem afraid to rub fans in Dallas the wrong way and it appears to be coming from a place of emptiness. Aikman is looking around the league — and recollecting places he’s been as a player– and is envious that Dallas, so-called “America’s Team” has one of the weaker atmosphere’s in football.
“There was no way you could go down there near the goal line and use a hard count in an opposing stadium. And yet in Texas Stadium, teams did it all the time.”
The reason for Aikman’s lashing out at fans comes a week after a Monday night thrashing that saw more Bears fans at the Jerry-dome rather than hometown Cowboys fans. Dallas does’t return home for two weeks so we will have to wait and see if Cowboys fans have any sort of response to their hero calling them out on their loyalty.
