This time it was Switzer, not Johnson, who touched the Lombardi Trophy and who could proclaim the Cowboys the best damn football team in the land. Yet these three Super Bowl triumphs by Dallas over the past four seasons are linked by a common bond. They are the building blocks that established these Cowboys as an elite modern-era team, raising them into that rarefied atmosphere already occupied by Vince Lombardi's Packers, Chuck Noll's Steelers and the rest of the legendary clubs since the late 1940s. An unprecedented three rings in four years is the resume of a dynasty. No debate needed.
People think it is easy to do what they have done.
But it isn't. Or more would have done it. But as we watched the Cowboys strut their stuff, as only Deion and friends can do, there also was a sad sense of finality about what was happening on the turf of Sun Devil Stadium. For Dallas also is the last elite team the NFL will see. The destructive effects of free agency, gnawing away at the best and improving the weakest, will see to that.