Desperate in Big D

Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, must be thinking the same thing I am right now.

He is surely thankful for his recent jump into the Arena Football League and his new team, the Dallas Desperados, because one loss this season with the Cowboys might be all it takes to run him and his Cowboys out of Texas Stadium.

Why such pressure?

Well, last year the Cowboys were rebuilding, and they used four different quarterbacks during the season to prove it.

They won only five games, yet many analysts believe they overachieved in winning that many.

However, no game that the Cowboys played last year, and arguably no game that they've played since their last Super Bowl victory in 1995, will be as important as the game they will play on Sunday, September 8, 2002.

That's opening day of the 2002-03 season, and the Cowboys travel to Houston for the NFL debut of the expansion Houston Texans, which will be televised nationally on ESPN.

The NFL is supposed to help maintain some parity in the league by ensuring that last place teams have relatively easy schedules.

Well thanks Paul Tagliabue, but this will be the hardest game imaginable for Dallas.

Enter the perennially-hated Dallas Cowboys into Houston's brand new Reliant Stadium, playing against a team with absolutely no pressure and, in all likelihood, starting a quarterback more talented than any of the four quarterbacks the Cowboys can use.

As for Texans' fans, Houston haven't played host to an NFL game since the Oilers lame-duck season in 1996.

It doesn't even matter that the Cowboys have won only 10 games the past two seasons, they are still the five-time Super Bowl champions, and outside of the Dallas area, the country relishes in their failures.

In Dallas, few people expect the Cowboys to really contend for a playoff spot this year, though they should be able to improve upon their previous five-win season.

Without question, though, everyone in the Cowboys organization, and every football fan in Dallas, knows that they are playing in what is perhaps the only must-win first-game ever played in any sport. And they're not doing it with a very good team.

It's not about the record, because the Cowboys are almost certain to lose their third and fourth games of the season when they play at Philadelphia and St. Louis, respectively. For Dallas, it will be an uphill battle all season.

It's not about proving anything either, because if they win, they prove nothing.

It's not about shutting down star players, because as of now, the Texans can't even fill out a roster sheet.

For the Dallas Cowboys, this game is about nothing more than maintaining the right to exist as a franchise and allowing Cowboy fans to sustain hope that one day in the future, the team will be good once again.

A loss to the Texans, and we can kiss it all goodbye -- the history, the pride, the big blue star, and most importantly, hope.

For Emmitt Smith, who needs only 540 yards to pass Walter Payton and become the NFL's all-time leading rusher -- sorry buddy -- without a victory in Houston, you'll never find your way to a Wheaties' box.

Losing a game to an expansion team is unfortunate, and being the first team to lose is quite embarrassing.

Houston fans can attest to that, as their Oilers handed the Jacksonville Jaguars that franchise's first ever victory in the 1995 season. But, that was in week five of that season.

That same season, the other expansion team, the Carolina Panthers, didn't win a game until week six against the New York Jets.

It took the 1999 expansion Cleveland Browns until week 10 to claim a victory, when they defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Cowboys, on the other hand, get to play Houston, a new expansion team, in their very first game, at night, on the road, on national television.

If they lose, it's all over for Cowboy fans who had better learn to like Arena football in a hurry, because the Desperados, at least, give them something to be excited for -- an expansion team of their own.