Guess that's not as important once you know you're about to play the top seed in the NFC. In many ways I'm prepared to look the other way if the third string is doing all they can to score late; they obviously need practice in a real game, and there are few no risk opportunities to get it. And if I went into a game under those conditions I'd be thinking, As far as I'm concerned, it's 0-0 and I don't feel like being blown out today.

I hear what you're saying that the players perspective is different than mine; that said, I know how much more frequently I've seen kneel downs than TDs under those conditions, so the indication is the consensus is usually with me (though the NCAA did name it's award for best player after the coach who freely admitted the most egregious piling on in football history, but the NCAA sucks. )

Seems to me the Vikings biggest beef should be with the Pack and, to a lesser extent, Favre, but they generally weren't good at the same times, so maybe not (but no one put a gun to their head on The Trade, y'know. ) For me Minnesota has always been a team I kinda liked but wasn't COMMITTED to until they became associated in my mind with Mahtaliel. Dallas owes them for The Trade, and dad raised me a Cowboys fan; I was an Oilers fan first though, and it always seemed to me like the Vikings were the NFCs answer to us (except they could win playoff games. ) And when I was in an ICU watching my dad die with my closest family 50 miles away, there was another family with someone there who gave me the two greatest gifts I received at the time:

1) A number of fantasy books that included TGH and TDR to distract me from what I couldn't escape, ultimately leading here, and

2) because, as I later learned, one of them worked for the Full Moon Foundation and had passed my story along to its founder, an autographed photo of Warren Moon in a Vikings jersey.

FWIW I don't think it's fair to hate the Cowboys for the Americas Team thing except when a current member tries to lay claim to it, because Jerry has shredded everything decent and noble for which Tom Landry stood. Americas Team played it fair and clean while teams like the Raiders were winning championships, after the first Super Bowl winning coach MOCKED their frostbite following the Ice Bowl. They dumped Hollywood Henderson despite undeniable talent years before the NFL had a substance abuse policy.

Jerrys team has Pro Bowl receivers arrested in a crack house wearing nothing but a pipe (but then, Switzer had OU players who were indicted for drug related MURDER, and Jerry knew that when he hired the man. ) Americas Team would never have accepted TO after what he did the FIRST time he was on the Star in Texas Stadium. Americas Team would never have given Aikman so little protection he got two concussions in ONE YEAR, then tossed him aside without a second thought. That man could've started on a lot of teams after that, but he was in tears at his press conference, and didn't WANT to play for anyone else. This was the same Aikman who GAVE BACK part of a contract only a year old, just so the team could meet Emmitts demands and get him back on the field since it was the middle of September. He was the exception even in the early '90s, the last vestige of a team soon to be better represented by TO. That's a lot of what upsets me with the Cowboys now despite being a lifelong fan: I expect better, so don't talk the talk if you don't walk the walk.