The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football franchise that plays in the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) of the National Football League (NFL). They are headquartered in Valley Ranch in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The team plays its home games at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area, which finished construction in time for the 2009 season. The Cowboys joined the NFL as a 1960 expansion team. The team's national following might best be represented by its NFL record of consecutive home sell-outs. The Cowboys' streak of 160 sold-out regular and post-season games began in 1990, and included 79 straight sellouts at their former home, Texas Stadium, and 81 straight sell-outs on the road. The franchise shares the record for most Super Bowl appearances (8) with the Pittsburgh Steelers, corresponding to most NFC championships (8). The Cowboys are the only NFL team to record 20 consecutive winning seasons (1966–1985), in which they only missed the playoffs twice (1974 and 1984), a NFL record that remains unchallenged.

Dallas ( /ˈdæləs/) is the third-largest city in the state of Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. Divided between Collin, Dallas, Denton, Kaufman, and Rockwall counties, the city had a population of 1,197,816 in 2010, according to the United States Census Bureau.

The city is the largest economic center of the 12-county Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area (the DFW MSA) that according to the March 2010 U.S. Census Bureau release, had a population of 6,371,773. The metroplex economy is the sixth largest in the United States, with a 2010 gross metropolitan product of $374 billion.

Dallas was founded in 1841 and was formally incorporated as a city in February 1856. The city's economy is primarily based on banking, commerce, telecommunications, computer technology, energy, healthcare and medical research, transportation and logistics. The city is home to the third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the nation. Located in North Texas and a major city in the American South, Dallas is the main core of the largest inland metropolitan area in the United States that lacks any navigable link to the sea.

Emmitt James Smith, III (born May 15, 1969) is a retired American football player who was a running back in the National Football League (NFL) for fifteen seasons during the 1990s and 2000s. Smith played college football for the University of Florida, where he was an All-American. A first-round pick in the 1990 NFL Draft, he played professionally for the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals of the NFL.

During his long professional career, he became the NFL's all-time rushing leader, breaking the record formerly held by Walter Payton, and played for three Super Bowl-winning Dallas Cowboys teams. Smith is the only running back to ever win a Super Bowl championship, the NFL Most Valuable Player award, the NFL rushing crown, and the Super Bowl Most Valuable Player award all in the same season (1993). He is also one of only four running backs to lead the NFL in rushing three or more consecutive seasons, joining Steve Van Buren, Jim Brown and Earl Campbell. Smith led the league in rushing and won the Super Bowl in the same year three times (1992, 1993, and 1995) when to that point it had never been done. Smith is also one of only two non-kickers in NFL history to score more than 1,000 career points (the other being Jerry Rice). Smith was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2010, and is the first player from the 1990 NFL Draft to be inducted.

Jason Calvin Garrett (born March 28, 1966) is an American former National Football League player and the current head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Garrett was the offensive coordinator and assistant head coach of the Cowboys before being promoted to interim head coach after the Cowboys fired coach Wade Phillips on November 8, 2010 while remaining offensive coordinator.

Garrett went to prep school at University School in Hunting Valley, Ohio, and was a letterman in football, basketball, and baseball. In football, as a senior, he won All-League honors as both a quarterback and safety. Jason Garrett graduated from University School in 1984.

Garrett attended grade school at Saint Ann's, located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Garrett originally played college football at Princeton University, but transferred to Columbia University when his father, Jim Garrett, became the head coach. Following his father's resignation as head coach after Columbia's 0-10 1985 season, Jason and his brothers, John and Judd, transferred back to Princeton. At Princeton in 1987 and 1988, Garrett completed 366 of 550 passes (66.5%) for 4,274 yards and 20 touchdowns and won the Asa S. Bushnell Cup as the Ivy League Player of the Year. In 1988 he piloted Princeton in a losing effort against his former team, snapping Columbia's 44-game losing streak. He earned a degree in history in 1989. He continues to hold the Ivy League career record for completion percentage with 66.5% (366–550) and his 1988 percentage of 68.2% (204–299) stood as the league record until 2000, when Gavin Hoffman posted a 70.5% mark.

Jerral "Jerry" Wayne Jones (born October 13, 1942) is an American businessman, known for being the owner and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League.

Jones was born in Los Angeles, California. His family moved to North Little Rock, Arkansas when he was an infant. Jones was a star running back at North Little Rock High School. He attended college at the University of Arkansas where he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. He was also a co-captain of the 1964 National Championship football team. He was an all-Southwest Conference offensive lineman for Hall of Fame coach Frank Broyles and a teammate of Jimmy Johnson. Other notable teammates were Glen Ray Hines, a consensus All-American offensive tackle, Ken Hatfield, Jim Lindsey, and future Outland Trophy winner Loyd Phillips. Several future great head coaches were assistant coaches for Frank Broyles and the Razorbacks during his college career in Fayetteville including Hayden Fry, future legendary Head Coach at the University of Iowa, Johnny Majors, future Head Coach at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Tennessee, and most notably Barry Switzer, Hall of Fame coach of the University of Oklahoma. Jones is one of a very small number of NFL owners who actually earned a significant level of success as a football player (Jerry Richardson of the Carolina Panthers being another).