For me, the 1971 Dallas Cowboys are the be-all, end-all of professional football. Super Bowl VI, in which they defeated the Miami Dolphins 24-3 is still, to me the ultimate game of football. It was the last Cowboys game I did not watch - we drove to Irving to watch it at my aunt's home, but I wasn't interested (hey, I was seven). I got interested in the Cowboys immediately after the game, and have been semi-obsessed with that year and that team ever since. I got the record album (yes, there is one) started collecting cards, got the electric football teams (for SB V, VI and VII) and yearned for a copy of the Sports Illustrated magazine about the game that my Gough cousins had. (Just look at me here in 2007 the first time I met someone from the team - with the Cowboys' two rings from their Super Bowl wins). 
It is so bad the year even has its own shelf in the study - with generic Cowboys on the shelves above and below and generic football on the shelf below that.
(There are some compromises - America's Team won't fit anywhere else and the DVD of the actual game film and the America's Team feature is with the other Cowboys DVDs. And the Staubach photo is technically 1973. And I got the banner in 1973. But the theme is the 1971 team). It has the SI edition I always wanted, a photo signed by MVP Roger Staubach, and a card signed by HOF cornerback 
Mel Renfro, who Grayson and I met at the Cowboys' Thanksgiving game in 2007. (Yes, those are the rings for SB VI and XII on his hand on my shoulder - how cool is that! Woohoo!)
Well, all good things come to those who wait, and finally there is a book about that team and that season. As books go, it's pretty good. It retells some of the stories in Bob St. John's 1972 We Love You Cowboys, points back to Steve Perkins' Next Year's Champions about the 1968 squad, and doesn't have the musical score of the America's Game piece. But it tells a similar story, and does it well. And good or bad - it has a place of The Shelf.
