Every year ESPN believes and adds to the hype coming from the Dallas Cowboys about their status as one of the elite teams in the league. Every year that is an exaggeration.

Lookit. Since the turn of the century (15 seasons!) they have made it to the playoffs five times. They were bounced out in the wild card game in 2003 and 2006, they were bounced out in the divisional game in 2007, they won the wild card game but lost the divisional game in 2009, then they had a five-year stretch where they didn’t make the playoffs at all, and in 2014 they made it through the wild card but lost in the divisional game again.

In the same 15 seasons the New England Patriots made the playoffs 13 times. They won the Super Bowl four times and lost it three times. Similarly, the Green Bay Packers have made it to the playoffs 12 times in 15 years and won the Super Bowl once. The Pittsburgh Steelers have been to the playoffs 10 times and won two Super Bowls while losing one.

I think ESPN is in love with money and with flamboyance, and Jerry Jones, the owner of the Cowboys, has lots of both. Look at that pleasure palace of a stadium he built (with $325 million of taxpayer money; to be fair, he did foot the balance of the $1.5 billion cost himself).

Anyway, I wish the network would hype some more deserving team. Romo’s broken vertebra is a calamity for the Cowboys and for the quarterback himself, but were they really going to be a playoff team? The Magic 8-Ball says “Outlook not so good.”