THE NFL / BILL PLASCHKE : Yes, It Was Dumb, but It Might Get Cowboys to the Super Bowl

Knee-deep in rotten grapes, Barry Switzer told his football team Monday that what they really smelled was vintage wine.

The Dallas Cowboys have their noses so far in the air, they just might believe him.

And wouldn’t that be our luck.

The underachievers win their last two games, win their first-round playoff game, win in San Francisco in the NFC championship, win the Super Bowl . . . then the truly incredible occurs.

Switzer saves his job.

And Halas weeps.

It could happen, you know. Like Dudley Do-right, Switzer is falling off cliffs and stepping in front of trains on his way to a happy ending.

It started Monday, the day after the Cowboy coach had handed the Philadelphia Eagles a victory, and the 49ers home-field advantage, by twice attempting to convert a fourth-down play on his 29-yard line in the final two minutes.

The first time, he called “Load left.” Running back Emmitt Smith was stopped by charging linebackers. But officials had whistled the play dead because the two-minute warning was upon them.

So Switzer tried it again. Smith again. The play was called “Slug left,” but it looked the same to us.

It looked the same to the Eagles, too, who stopped Smith again, took the ball, and moments later kicked the game-winning field goal in a 20-17 victory.

Twelve hours later, Dallas-area newspapers were carrying such headlines as “Dumb and Dumber” and “Fiasco in Philly.”

“Switzerscide,” one Texas newspaper columnist called it.

The football world thought Switzer should have punted the ball into the wind and forced Eagle quarterback Rodney Peete to beat them. The football world has been unanimous in its condemnation of Switzer’s call and his season, during which football’s best team has suffered three of its four losses because of undisciplined silliness.

The football world is saying Switzer should be fired, and the Cowboys should be ashamed.

Which means Switzer and the Cowboys have the football world right where they want it.

Finally, the sporting world’s greatest collection of rich and famous champions have something to play for.

“I met with them at 2 o’clock today, I told them . . . we have an incredible opportunity here,” Switzer said. “It’s us against the world. A lot of people have written us off.

“It’s really, really something that gives us a chance to make a little history here.”

Make history? What, become the first team to win the Super Bowl with a coach who once caused a game to be stopped because he didn’t know the rules?

What, become the first team to win the Super Bowl with a coach who sometimes can’t make Saturday night curfew because he’s in another state?

But that is only reality, a word that has little meaning on a team whose owner once organized a discussion group with one of his defensive linemen, the world’s best female tennis player, and the founder of Nike Inc. On the sideline. During a game.

At the team’s headquarters in Valley Ranch, an upscale little subdivision that has as much to do with an actual ranch as the salad dressing, it is all about perception.

And there is a feeling here that the Cowboys are about to get very dangerous because of the perception that they are not.

Thanks to that genius, Switzer.

“I made the call, I stood up there and made the damn call,” he said Monday, turning a questionable coaching decision into an act of martyrdom.

Brilliant.

“I believed in them then when I made the decision on fourth down,” he said of his offense. “It wasn’t because I didn’t have confidence in the defense. It was because I wanted to give the opportunity to the best line and best running backs in football.”

You see, guys? He wasn’t going for a first down because he wanted to finally make his imprint on a team where he has been little more than a curator.

He was doing it for you.

The players returned this grand gesture with volumes of public support, but they were just looking for a comfortable plane ride home.

They weren’t buying it. They thought his call was a dumb as you did.

The young players may like Switzer’s laid-back style but the veterans can barely tolerate him. They don’t think he cares as much as they do.

They hear his locker room speeches about how “I don’t need this. I didn’t ask for this.”

They notice him relaxing in local hot spots during the week.

They see him fly out of town on Saturdays to watch his son play college football.

The veterans hate it that Switzer hangs around during the week, then blindly makes a call on Sunday that could cost them their dream season.

But it won’t. Not after Monday. Not after he boarded up the windows and sent his players to the basement and ordered them to hold tight.

There is nothing players love more than a good battle against the world. Switzer has provided them with enough fighting to last through January.

This best team in football--better than the 49ers on any field--will win the Super Bowl and happily crow, “Nobody believed in us.”

With straight faces, even.