"America's Team"  -  The Dallas Cowboys 

But the aura - the magic that captured the fascination of football fans around the country - had been growing for more than a decade.

By the time the moniker was first uttered in a typically over-dramatic feature by NFL Films, the Cowboys had indeed been the most popular football team in America for quite a while.

But the reason, most of those who were the heart of the organization agree, wasn't just because the Cowboys won. To the contrary, it was because they lost. Lost in the playoffs, lost in
 the championship games, lost in the Super Bowl.

Before the Cowboys were "America's Team," they were "Next Year's Champions." And they endured a brief period in the late 1960s when they were viewed as the little engine that almost could.

It was their struggle, their underdog appeal, that endeared them to the hearts of the football-watching nation.

"It started in the '60s because we were just an expansion team," said Tex Schramm, whose vision as the team's first general manager was success, but not the type of shore-to-shore love affair America had with the Cowboys.

"We captured people's imagination because we had good-looking uniforms with that star on the helmet," Schramm said. "We had a modest head coach that people respected. We had a snappy quarterback. We had track men playing defensive back. We were just the underdog that people would be attracted to."

The Cowboys were not good their first five years, from 1960 through 1964. But Schramm, head coach Tom Landry and scouting director Gil Brandt stuck to their plan - and owner Clint Murchison stuck with his staff - because they knew it was a good one. They knew it would take time to work.

"In those days, an expansion team wasn't looked at as much," Schramm said. "Nowadays, they give them a lot of players. We didn't even participate in the first draft.

"We were starting from real scratch, and it was considered quite an accomplishment to do what we did in the first five years."

By 1966, the Cowboys were maturing into a team that could compete with the established powers of the NFL. And America was just waiting for a new face among the league's elite.

"People could see we were becoming pretty good, and Sports Illustrated and others picked us a little before we had everything in place to win a Super Bowl," said Brandt. "And we got this 'almost but not quite there' image."

It started in 1966, when the Packers denied Dallas on a first-and-goal at the 2-yard line to preserve a 34-27 playoff victory in the Cotton Bowl.

As far as Sam Blair was concerned, "That was the day the Cowboys became America's Team.

"That was a game where there was a national audience, and it was a great game," said Blair, who covered the Cowboys in those days for The Dallas Morning News. "People saw Don Meredith, who was a great personality. They saw Bob Hayes, the fastest man on earth. They saw future Hall of Famers like Bob Lilly, Lee Roy Jordan, Chuck Howley, Mel Renfro - and they were all in their mid- to late 20s. People knew they were going to be good for a long time."

In Peter Golenbock's book Cowboys Have Always Been My Heroes, receiver Frank Clarke said he had heard people call the Cowboys "America's Team" in 1966, and he could see it becoming true.

"We saw that everywhere we went, and this was especially true when we went to New York, people were liking the Cowboys," Clarke said. "We could go to Pittsburgh, and they liked us. They may not have wanted us to beat their Steelers, but they liked us."

Said Schramm: "We lost, but we'd almost beaten Green Bay, with all the legends of the game. It attracted people's attention."

Still, the Cowboys were several years away from being the NFL's best.

It was accentuated a year later, in the game that would become known as the "Ice Bowl," when the Packers rallied from a 17-14 deficit with a 78-yard drive in the final minutes to cement not only their place in the Super Bowl, but the Cowboys' image as big-game blunderers.

It even created some self-doubt among the Cowboys.

"When you get to the pinnacle, but don't actually climb the mountain, there's apprehension," Brandt said. "You start to wonder if you're every going to win the jackpot."

When the Cowboys lost in the 1968 and '69 playoffs to Cleveland, that apprehension became a mountain of its own.

"After we lost twice to Green Bay and Cleveland, then that became a struggle," said Landry, who was suddenly being criticized as a coach who couldn't win in big games.

"There was pressure," Brandt said. "But not from the man who made decisions."

That was Murchison, the man who had surprised a lot of people by signing Landry to a 10-year contract in 1964. That took concern away from Landry's job security and put it back on the field, where the Cowboys' fallen egos needed attention.

"We had to build the team's confidence up," Landry said. "A lot of credit for that goes to the players of those days."

After the '68 season, one of the first Cowboys heroes was calling it quits. Meredith, disappointed after predicting a Super Bowl championship that didn't materialize, announced his retirement, and it would take a couple of seasons for the next quarterback hero to settle into the reigns.

"We had to reshuffle at quarterback," Landry said. "That wasn't easy to do."

Despite the arrival of Roger Staubach, who had served in Vietnam after graduating from the Naval Academy as the 1963 Heisman Trophy winner, Landry stuck with his veteran backup, Craig Morton.

It would be the 1970s before Staubach became the quarterback who would lead the Cowboys through their fears and the icon of one of football's greatest dynasties - the Dallas Cowboys of the 1970s.

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