As the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys rev up for Sunday night’s high-stakes, nationally televised football face-off, local residents are preparing in kind.
Lindsay Rogers of North Potomac said this weekend’s game will be her first at FedEx Field. Rogers had an interesting experience watching the Washington-Dallas game in September, as she witnessed a group of Redskins fans refusing to order from a waitress because she dared to wear a Cowboys jersey.
Dave & Busters in the White Flint mall will host a “We Want Dallas” pep rally from 7 to 9 tonight. ESPN 980’s Sports Reporters team of Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin will broadcast a show from 4-7:30 p.m. and a pair of tickets to the game will be awarded to the winner of the best “Beat Dallas” sign.
LaRon Hayes, a Redskins season ticket holder who lives near Dupont Circle, said that scalpers routinely sell Redskins-Cowboys tickets for up to $600. But he’s not one of them.
“I would never sell my ticket for [any] amount of money,” he said. “I support my team, no matter what the price is.”
“You could say [the rivalry] was more intense in the ’70s,” said Michael Richman, the author of “The Redskins Encyclopedia: The Definitive History of the Washington Redskins.” “But it’s still there. The thing that really annoys Redskins fans is there are a lot of Cowboys fans in the area.”
Indeed. Eugene Walton, a Maryland resident and die-hard Cowboys fan, recommends Jasper’s and T.G.I. Friday’s — both in Greenbelt — for gameday viewing, especially ’Skins-Cowboys matchups.
A Jasper’s manager said the bar’s eight 42-inch television sets blare at high volume on Sundays for both Dallas and Washington fans.
Houston Chronicle columnist Richard Justice said he didn’t think there was the same level of obsession over the rivalry in Dallas, but added that “the Redskins are number one on the radar” there.
Justice, a former Redskins beat writer, said that he was in the middle of doing reps at a D.C. area health club in the early 1990s when a fan came up and complained to him about the team — even though Art Monk had just broken the record for most career receptions and the Redskins had won two in a row.
But the rivalry extends to the players as well.
“You really want to beat ‘America’s Team.’ You read about them all the time,” said Redskins Hall of Fame quarterback Sonny Jurgensen.
“I think it’s more of a rivalry for the fans than it is for the players,” Jurgensen added.
“There are very few relationships between a sports franchise and a city like the Redskins and Washington, D.C.,” said Justice. “Those people are obsessive.”
