Thursday, January 16, 1997

Cowboys remain merchandise champs

By JAIME ARON / AP Sports Writer (Jan. 16, 1997)

DALLAS (AP) - Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson is convinced. So is Green Bay star Reggie White. The Super Bowl-bound Packers are the "real America's Team."

Not so fast.

Green Bay may be have surpassed Dallas on the field, but the Cowboys still lead the NFL in television ratings and merchandising - the most important categories after wins and losses.

Although the Packers are also charging toward No. 1 in those areas and would get a huge boost by winning the Super Bowl, officials at Fox Sports and NFL Properties say the turnover at the top will have to wait.

"The Cowboys are still certainly one of, if not the, ratings grabber," said Fox Sports spokesman Vince Wladika.

The Packers' NFC Championship victory over Carolina was the highest-rated early championship game in 11 years. However, it fell short of the ratings generated by the Cowboys in the four previous NFC title games.

"The Packers are certainly catching up," Wladika said. "Going into next year, we'll have to see. I think it also depends on what the Packers do in the Super Bowl."

NFL spokesman Chris Widmaier said the league projects that Dallas will win the merchandising battle for the fifth straight year when the fiscal year ends March 31.

"All of our talks with retailers and fan research shows the Cowboys are the NFL's most popular club," he said. "The Packers are giving them a run for their money, but the Cowboys are still expected to finish No. 1."

Dallas picked up the "America's Team" moniker mostly as a publicity stunt during its glory days of the 1970s. The nickname stuck and was backed by high merchandise sales.

But over the last few months, Dallas has done its best to abdicate the throne.

The Cowboys just finished their worst season since 1991 and have been dogged for two years by repeated off-field transgressions.

Six of the last 13 drug-related suspension by the NFL have been against Dallas players, including stars Michael Irvin and Leon Lett, who has been busted twice. Irvin and offensive lineman Erik Williams were recently cleared of an unfounded rape accusation, but their reputations suffered nonetheless.

Each bit of bad news has sent people jumping off the Cowboys' bandwagon. Callers to radio talk shows and letter-to-the-editor writers repeatedly insist they can no longer support a team with so many blemishes.

Roy Clark, general manager of The Marketing Arm, a Dallas company that handles about 200 athlete endorsements a year, said there's been a dramatic decline in companies seeking Cowboys to hawk their products.

"We're seeing that whoever the Cowboy may be - whether his image is clean or not - companies want to stay away," Clark said. "That was never the case over the last four or five years."

Clark said that guilt by association has hurt Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Deion Sanders.

"It's not that people have a problem with them individually," Clark said. "It's that corporations wonder how people perceive the Dallas Cowboys."

Still, Clark, whose company represents White, says he doesn't expect Green Bay players to start stealing jobs from Dallas players.

"You won't see them surpass the Cowboys," Clark said. "There's something glitzy and sexy about the Cowboys the Packers can never have."