As one of North America's most famous sports teams, the Dallas Cowboys are less a football outfit sometimes than a multimedia experience. On top of their gridiron duties, the Cowboys are their cheerleaders, their merchandising, their gargantuan stadium, and everything in between.
This, however, appears to come at the expense of Dallas's long-term pigskin success. In a Wednesday morning story by Kalyn Kahler of ESPN, several former Cowboys took aim at one of the franchise's practices in particular: allowing fans to tour their facilities.
"You got real facilities here," Washington Commanders linebacker Dante Fowler said, comparing his new team to his two-year stint with Dallas. "You might not see tourists coming around, but it keeps the main thing the main thing."
"You're on your way to eat lunch and you're running into tours," free-agent safety and ex-Cowboy Jayron Kearse said. "You're on your way to meetings, you're running into tours. We're here for football, it's our job to come in and be able to focus whether we're in the weight room, or our coach is teaching us something in the meeting room, where you have 30 to 35 people walking by, looking through the glass while you're in meetings."
Dallas owner Jerry Jones, for his part, fiercely defended the tours.
"Not one time (have I heard any complaints about them)," Jones said, "but the most important thing is it wouldn't make any difference. Period. Because overall, they're swimming against the stream."
The Cowboys are 3-3 this season, third in the NFC East and a game and a half behind the first-place Commanders.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Ex-Cowboys Call Out Team for Holding 'Distraction' of Fan Tours During Workouts.
