All Honest NFL Fans can admit this

You didn't ask for it, and sports talk is far from on-brand for Get Enriched Quick, but as a NFL fan and Texas native, I couldn't help myself but to make a little contribution to woke media ;)

See, if you’re a football fan, you know good and well that the Cowboys are a greatly assembled team on the verge of a Super Bowl, while the Texans are a dumpster-fire led by a terrible coach and power hungry GM who happen to be the same person. 

But what if that's just the narrative the system wants us to believe?

Think critically for a moment as you review the facts from the past decade (2010-2019) -

Cowboys:

• 3 Division Titles in past 10 seasons; 2 in the past 5 
• 2 playoff wins
• Best wins last year (2019-2020 season): Rams, who finished 3rd in their division, and split games with the 9-7 Eagles (despite losing the more important one)

Texans:

• 6 Division Titles in past 10 seasons; 4 in the past 5 
• 4 playoff wins

• Best wins last year: Mahomes’ Chiefs, Brady’s Patriots, and the surging Titans to win the division
• The Texans also beat the Cowboys head to head in their most recent face-off in 2018

 
I mean, this is game over guys! If I hadn't told you the names of these two teams, it would take you all of about 2 seconds to determine which of these franchises has been a more successful organization. If the way we measure the quality of a team is based on how it actually performs, the Texans are objectively better than the Cowboys - and have been for quite a while now. But this isn't what we're told at all. What we've been led to believe is a series of subjective explanations that, if they were true, attempt to justify this gap in success. Let's look at a few common ones and see if they hold up. 

Excuse #1 - The AFC South, Which The Texans Play In, Is A Terrible Division

This is a lie that we commonly accept, yet never test. It's made it's way into our brains through media promulgation, but it's a position built on semantics rather than statistics.

​Interestingly, the AFC South has won a wild card bid (i.e., sent two teams to the playoffs) each of the past 3 seasons - and is the only division in football to do so. In other words, the AFC South is in fact the most consistently deep and competitive division in the NFL.

On the other hand, The NFC East (home of the Cowboys), wouldn’t have even sent one team to the playoffs based on record last year. How the Super Bowl dark horse Cowboys failed to win more than 50% of their games while playing in the actual worst division in football is mind-boggling, even for me. 

Excuse #2 - Sure, The AFC South Is 'Deep' - But Its Teams Don't Perform Well In The Playoffs

Admittedly, The AFC South lacks a Super Bowl championship since Peyton Manning’s Colts. Go ahead and enjoy that fact while it's still true ;) #Deshaun. But winning the Super Bowl is not the only metric for playoff success. In other words, it wouldn't be fair to describe 31 of the 32 teams every year as being utter failures; some fared better than others and had generally positive playoff results. 

For example, the AFC South has made it to the Conference Championship (i.e., finished in the top four teams in the NFL) in two of the past three seasons. That’s better than the highly-regarded NFC South, AFC North, and you guessed it, NFC East. Yet how much more do we hear about the greatness of the Cowboys, Eagles, Steelers, Ravens, Saints, and Buccaneers than the Texans, Titans, or Colts? 

For the record, the AFC South is tied with the other four divisions, as no division has made it to the conference championship or better in all of the past three seasons. While by no means the absolute best division in football, it turns out the AFC South stacks up pretty well against the best teams from other divisions when it comes playoff time.

Excuse #3 - Conference Play. We all know the AFC is way weaker than the NFC!

Well, the AFC has won 5 of the past 6 Super Bowls... Despite this fact, it could still be true that the NFC is better than the AFC - but way better? That's a mighty tough sell to make. 

​Remember though, I'm not here to convince you that the Texans are the best team in football or that the AFC South is the best division. I am simply exposing that based on performance, the negative characterization and lack of notoriety they receive is glaring, particularly when contrasted with the in-state rival Cowboys. Most national betting sites project the Texans to win 6 or 7 games and finish 3rd in their division, while the Cowboys are without fail talked about as a team on the verge of a Super Bowl birth. And these three excuses, while maybe not completely debunked, are far from compelling enough to warrant the mistreatment.

So what gives? 

The Real Reasons The National Media Disrespects The AFC South & Its Teams

 First, the AFC South collectively is the youngest division in football. By that I mean that its teams are the most newly added expansion teams of the NFL, and thus lack the tradition, history, and fan-bases of other popular legacy teams.

Second, the AFC South is the smallest market division in football. Jacksonville, Nashville, Indianapolis, and Houston. The population of our four cities pales in comparison to every other division. The NFC East, rather, represents New York City, Washington DC, Dallas, and Philadelphia.

In other words, follow the people, and follow the money. That’s why the Cowboys are talked about as Super Bowl contenders every year despite the fact that they are an incredibly average team. Their huge fan base as well as the huge fan bases of their division rivals will eat up that Cowboy content all day! And that equates to dollar signs for the national media. At the same time, both of these factors make it incredibly easy to pick on the AFC South, as you ruffle the fewest amount of feathers and lose the fewest amount of dollars in the process.

But the numbers don’t lie! 

So for my fellow NFL fans out there: can we all just take a minute to acknowledge that the Texans are the best football team in the state? :)

#DallasWhereYouAt #CalledOut