I have known about Steve Perkins' contribution to the Dallas Cowboys since 1974, when my cousin Jimmy had a copy of Next Year's Champions on the bookshelf in the bedroom I used when I was going to school in Irving. That book details the Cowboy’s 1968 season, beginning with the Ice Bowl in Green Bay, and ending with the unexpected divisional playoff loss to Cleveland. What I didn't know was that Perkins had followed the book up three years later with an account of the 1971 season, which culminated in the Cowboys winning the Super Bowl finally.
As I noted when posting a review on another book dedicated to the 1971 season, http://mcsmith.blogs.com/general/2012/02/breakthrough-boys-the-story-of-the-1971-super-bowl-champion-dallas-cowboys-jaime-aron.html, that season is something of a Holy Grail for me, so unexpectedly finding this book was a big deal.
Oddly, the book itself was a bit of a letdown. The Cowboys had become less fun after Don Meredith left, and it was odd to see Perkins actually blaming Meredith for not getting them over the hump. And the drama of the 1971 season that is played up in the NFL films episode about the season is missing from the book, which instead plays up the similarities between the 1970 and 1971 seasons, rather than their eventual difference at the end. But for a Cowboys completist like me, it was a good find.
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