One of John Madden's football cliches is that "winning is the best deodorant". And certainly, Bill Parcells has done much to restore some of the luster of the Dallas Cowboys by giving them a chance to win this year.

And as the Cowboys achieve their first winning record since 1998, interest in them is returning, although nowhere near as great as the fever pitch of 1970s. During that decade, the Cowboys fielded consistently winning teams who had five Super Bowl appearances, two Super Bowl wins, an innovative offense and a smothering defense. Off the field, their management built a press-friendly PR department, an endlessly profitable marketing machine, and generated even further hype by replacing football's traditional collegiate-style staid poodle-skirt and pompom flashing cheerleaders with showgirls in go-go boots, miniskirts and halter tops.

The Cowboys' hype peaked in early 1979, when NFL Films titled their annual highlight film "America's Team"--which subliminally allowed any fan dissatisfied with the blue-collar image of his local team to be a fan of the cool, high-tech Cowboys, their sexy cheerleaders, and their nattily-attired war hero born again Christian coach, Tom Landry. Clearly, there were lots of reasons to be a fan of the team. (And not coincidentally, lots of reasons to hate them as well.)

The Cowboys PR department made household names not only of their superstars--enormously talented athletes now in the NFL Hall of Fame-Bob Lilly, Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, and Randy White; but also players that included defensive backs such as Charlie Waters and Cliff Harris, who might have gotten little ink from the press--and thus would have been little by fans--had they played on other teams.

Instead, Cliff and Charlie became the Batman and Robin defensive safeties of the Cowboys. As sportswriter Skip Bayless wrote in scathing look at the Landry-era Cowboys, God's Coach, "Staubach you worshiped, Cliff and Charlie you wanted to invite over for Sunday dinner."

The two played for the Cowboys beginning the early 70s, and both retired by the early 1980s. They've recently co-authored a book titled Tales From The Dallas Cowboys. (Waters even painted the illustration that appears on the book's dust jacket.) And tales is the right for it-there's lots of tall stories and more than a little braggadocio here, as the two take turns recounting the most amusing and amazing moments of their tenure with the 'Boys.

For a darker look at "America's Team", check out Bayless' 1990 book. And actually, the two books combined make for a fairly close-up look behind the scenes, and occasionally, their stories intersect, as Charlie Waters recounts a story that wouldn't have been out of place in Bayless' book:

The management of the Cowboys, and in particular Gil Brandt, vice president of personnel development, did some things that looked bizarre to their competition, such as drafting a quarterback when he was locked into a four-year wartime commission as a naval officer.

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