The Dallas Cowboys are a professional football team based in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. The Cowboys play in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) East. The team is based in Frisco, Texas, and has played its home games at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, since it opened in 2009. Prior to the 2013 season, the team decided to sell the stadium’s naming rights to telecommunications corporation AT&T, which gave the stadium its present moniker.[6][7] The Cowboys hired Mike McCarthy as their head coach in January 2020.[8] He is the seventh player in franchise history.[9] McCarthy succeeds Jason Garrett, who coached the team from 2010 to 2019.[9]
The Cowboys entered the NFL as an expansion franchise in 1960.[10] The team’s national fanbase may be best demonstrated by its NFL record of consecutive sellouts. Since 2002, the Cowboys have sold out 190 consecutive regular and post-season games (home and road).[11] The club has made eight Super Bowl appearances, tying the Pittsburgh Steelers and Denver Broncos for the second-most in history, trailing only the New England Patriots’ 11 appearances. They have eight NFC championships, which is tied for the most in conference history. The Cowboys are the only NFL club to have 20 consecutive winning seasons (1966-1985), missing the playoffs only twice (1974 and 1984).
According to Forbes, the Dallas Cowboys became the world’s most valuable sports team in 2015 after becoming the first to be valued at $4 billion.[13] The Cowboys also made $620 million in revenue in 2014, a record for a US sports franchise.[13] In 2018, they became the first NFL franchise to be valued at $5 billion[14] and topped Forbes’ list of the most valuable NFL teams for the 12th consecutive year.
In 1966, during their seventh season, the Cowboys agreed to host a second NFL Thanksgiving game; the practice of a team hosting on Thanksgiving had been pioneered by the Lions. Manager Schramm wanted to find a means to increase national exposure for his squad, which had suffered for the majority of the 1960s. In fact, the NFL guaranteed a portion of the gate income in the expectation that the game would not be a success due to the battle. With a kickoff just after 5 p.m. CST,[81] over 80,000 people (and millions watching on CBS) witnessed the Cowboys defeat Cleveland 26-14 at the Cotton Bowl.
