"If you can't be with the one you love, honey," Stephen Stills once told us, "love the one you're with."
Well, the one we love is football season. We can't be with football season, not until September 13, when the Cowboys open up the regular season in Tampa. So, for now, we'll settle on football season's, kind of dull sister, training camp.
Like a soldier on leave, I can't really complain. I've been waiting for this day basically since the taste of Philadelphia:44, Dallas:6 left my mouth.
Because This training camp in particular presents something of an anomaly. The aforementioned, pitiful, ugly way the Cowboys ended the 2008 season is unprecedented, as is the degree to which the team has underachieved over the past few seasons, and indeed the past decade.
It's fitting then, that when Dallas jumped offsides today, in the first practice of training camp, fans jumped all over them.
This is a legitimate season on the brink for Dallas, a fact that slipped my mind when I read Matt Barrie's Twitter post. "The fans just booed because the offense jumped offsides." At first, I thought this was a bit hastiness from the San Antonio faithful. It is the first day of camp, and if there's a time to get those false starts out of the system, it's now.
But the fact is, these boos had been sitting dormant in the back of fans throats since last December, when Dallas turned in the most deplorable performance anyone can seem to remember.