All of this to say: when I watch a game like today's, it's through the lens of a fan who remembers games like this one, when thousands upon thousands of mouth-breathing Cowboys fans filled the stick (making it sound like a Cowboys' home game), and I had to watch Drew Bledsoe throw a game-winning TD to KESHAWN JOHNSON. Yes, that actually happened. I'd like to go back in time and shove this game down my 16 year-old self's throat over and over again until he realized that Mike Nolan was maybe not going to be a very good coach.
I also remember games like this, when a former 49er and guy partly responsible for sending them spiraling downwards into a decade of horrenditude spent the afternoon destroying our joke of a secondary and being a dick in general, something he was very familiar with and good at. In retrospect, maybe that Singletary guy wasn't going to turn out so well either.
And I really remember this one. This was a new era. Jim Harbaugh was our savior. Just one week prior, he'd bested the most annoying used car salesman in the league in excruciating and incredible fashion, and things were going to be DIFFERENT THIS TIME GOD DAMMIT. Oh wait, there's a guy with a DEFLATED LUNG throwing a 70 yard pass in overtime to, and there's no way I could make this up, a security guard who won a fucking reality TV show to get his NFL shot.
I remembered all of these things. I only needed to look up the exact details, I remembered the years and the exact games and the losses and the feelings that came with each of those losses. This was the first time the 49ers have beaten the Cowboys in 12 years, the last being the infamous "star game" where TO was a huge dick and many members of Dallas were also huge dicks. That's how long it's been. The Cowboys haven't even been GOOD in all that time! That's an underrated string of really horrible losses.
So when I see a game like today's, played in a shiny new Dallas stadium that was taken over by fans in red jerseys who made it sound like a 49ers' home game (50/50 split!), who cheered lustily at every Tony Romo interception, every Anquan Boldin 3rd down conversion, and every Vernon Davis touchdown catch- THAT is what makes me still really really enjoy watching football. When all of that pent-up anger and frustration over terrible performances against this fucking pathetic husk of a football team finally gets let out in the most perfect amalgamation of events possible, it makes me almost kind of start to forget how terrible the end of last season was, and how thoroughly the Seahawks have ruined football.
There's still good left, and it comes in the form of Jerry Jones sadly applauding his team scoring in garbage time, Troy Aikman weakly and sheepishly defending his boys as they are being curb-stomped in front of his very eyes, and Jimmy Johnson forlornly yearning for days gone by after being forced to watch his beloved team violated at home in every possible way. There is good in the world, and it comes from Cowboys' tears:
Fuck you, Dallas. You deserved this one.
