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The Cowboys last won a Super Bowl in January 1996. This year is the 20th anniversary of the event. Which means that anyone born after Dallas beat the Steelers in Super Bowl XXX can’t relate to the Cowboys as NFL champions.

Via Jon Machota of the Dallas Morning News, Cowboys executive V.P. Stephen Jones recently was asked at a press conference whether he’s worried about the fact that a generation of kids don’t know the Cowboys as a championship team.

“Of course,” Jones said. “I mean, I’m worried every day that we don’t get a championship. You worry about that all the time. That’s why we’re very aggressive in trying to get there. It’s just not acceptable in our minds that we haven’t been able to win a championship in so long. I do worry about that. I worry about that all the time.”

Jones isn’t worried only about the kids.

“I worry about that with older fans, that they finally say, ‘We’re done,'” Jones said. “That’s why we try to do everything we can to show respect to our fans, to do things that I think are good things that our fans think are good things for our team. But at the end of the day, as I said, it’s all about the game and it’s all about winning a championship, and we got to get that done.”

Before they win the Super Bowl, the Cowboys have to get there. Before they get there, they have to get to the NFC championship game.

They haven’t even made it that far since winning the title that capped the 1995 season. Only three NFC teams haven’t: Washington, the Lions, and the Cowboys. That drought included at one point a 13-year delay between playoff wins.

Those facts make it even more amazing that the Cowboys continue to deliver massive audiences in nationally-televised games. So the fans, young or old, have yet to bail on the ‘Boys. It doesn’t mean they never will; they presumably haven’t because they assume it’s inevitable that the Cowboys someday will get back to the NFL’s final four.

It surely is, but if it takes another 20 years for it to happen, America might find itself another team.