Four Teams Are Left on Road to Titletown

After a week of sermons and smoke screens, from Austin to Appleton, the theme of today’s NFC championship game finally landed atop the muck Friday.

It was dropped there by the only player on these politically correct squads who has dared to glare.

“The Dallas Cowboys are America’s team, and they have been for a while,” receiver Robert Brooks said. “But now it’s time to bring that title back to where it belongs.”

That would be the Green Bay Packers, who visit the Cowboys today in a championship matchup that will tug at hearts.

Not even Troy Aikman’s best shrug can convince anybody that this is simply a contest involving human numbers who are paid $27,000 each, win or lose.

For three hours today, the Packers and Cowboys will engage in struggles far more universal.

Old versus new. Tradition versus change. Small-town versus big city.

Lombardi versus anybody who would wear his full name in gold lettering around his neck.

The Cowboys are the most popular football team in America.

The Packers used to be.

The Cowboys are the most powerful football team in America.

The Packers used to be.

The Cowboys are from a city with a population of roughly one million.

The Packers are from a city one-tenth that size.

The Cowboys are owned by a gas and oil baron who treats players as dollar bills that can buy him respect.

The Packers are owned by everyday folk who treat players as family.

The effects of progress on society have been mirrored in these football teams. These changes have not been lost on fans, some of whom will cheer not for teams, but value systems.

The Packers won three consecutive NFL championships in the mid-1960s. When game plans were simple, coaches were teachers and orders were obeyed.

Technology turned the huddle into a physics lab. Television turned the players into stars.

The Cowboys, with the flashiest athletes and most sophisticated toys, became the best and brightest.

The Packers became that sad little team from that cold little town.

The Cowboys have been in four consecutive NFC title games.

The Packers have not been in a title game in 28 years.

The Cowboys have beaten the Packers six consecutive times.

The Packers have won once in Dallas in the 10 years.

Today marks the Packers’ best chance to reclaim their former glory.

And with it, some say, the glory of a league that has recently lost teams in Los Angeles and Cleveland while adding them in Charlotte and Jacksonville.

The Packers have the league’s hottest quarterback, Brett Favre.

The Packers have the inspiration that comes from winning a playoff game last week at the home of the league’s other marquee team, the San Francisco 49ers.

But the Packers have one major problem.

Their franchise had declined such that even though they won their last two NFL (pre-NFC) championship meetings with the Cowboys, the most recent title came in the 1967 Ice Bowl.

Today, it will be the once-proud Packers who are shivering.

“It’s like, this ain’t even supposed to be happening to us,” Packer safety Leroy Butler said. “But it is.”

In the final press meeting of the week Friday, Favre, wearing a suit coat for the first time in many months, looked drained and stiff.

“If I was a betting man, I’m sure I would bet on the Cowboys like everybody else,” he said.

Packer Coach Mike Holmgren sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.

“In recent years there have only been two teams that everyone has talked about as the class of the NFC, just two teams--Dallas and San Francisco,” he said. “We were able to win a game last week against one of those two teams. That makes a difference. That changes things.”

But does it change them enough?

The Cowboys appear rather bored by it all.

While this is the Packers’ biggest game in three decades, this isn’t the Cowboys’ biggest game this month.

After all, if they can’t win the Super Bowl in two week in Tempe, Ariz., there is a chance that Coach Barry Switzer will be fired.

They are too smart to fall into the trap of looking beyond the Packers. “They can think that we are thrilled because we’re playing them instead of the 49ers,” Cowboy quarterback Aikman said, shaking his head and chuckling. “But no way do we think this game will be easy.”

Yet they are too experienced, it seems, to lose any sleep over it.

“For whatever reason, this team really plays loose in big games,” Aikman said. “I’ve never felt more focused than when I’m in big games.”

Scouts would say the Packers don’t stand a chance. Their rushing defense is not supposed to be able to stop the Cowboys’ Emmitt Smith. Their cornerbacks aren’t supposed to be athletic enough to cover Michael Irvin and Kevin Williams.

They have a converted fullback named Edgar Bennett and a questionable rushing game--and when is the last time a Super Bowl team didn’t have a rushing game?

The similar line of thinking goes, the Cowboys took a 24-3 lead and whipped the Packers, 34-24, about three months ago . . . and without top defensive players Deion Sanders and Darrin Smith.

But none of this accounts for the Switzer factor. In his first season, the Dallas coach helped cost the Cowboys the NFC title last year with several questionable calls and a sideline tantrum that cost them a 15-yard penalty.

“Yeah, I think coaching matters, it’s what I do,” said Holmgren, considered a far better strategist.

Then there is the Wade Wilson factor. He is Aikman’s struggling backup. The Packers will probably be coming after the battered Aikman to get Wilson into the game . . . at which point they will win, period.

Favre can run from his pursuers. Aikman, with sore legs and back, cannot. The Packers want him, bad.

“The difference between now and the first time we played them is that they have four and five guys on the ball each time,” Smith said of the Packer defense. “They are pressuring the passer a lot better.”

“After a while,” Packer nose tackle John Jurkovic said, “you get tired of being beat up by the bully.”

Today the sports world will learn whether that sort of a weariness also affects the bully.