Dallas Cowboys, American professional football team based in Dallas that plays in the National Football Conference (NFC) of the National Football League (NFL). One of the NFL’s most successful and popular franchises, the Cowboys have won five Super Bowls and eight conference championships.
(Read Walter Camp’s 1903 Britannica essay on inventing American football.)
The Cowboys joined the NFL as an expansion team in 1960 under head coach Tom Landry. After posting a losing record in each of their first five seasons, the Cowboys quickly became one of the NFL’s better teams, qualifying for the playoffs in 17 of 18 seasons between 1966 and 1983. The Cowboys joined the Detroit Lions in hosting an annual home game on Thanksgiving Day in 1966, a move that greatly increased the team’s national exposure. In 1967 Dallas reached the NFL championship game but lost to the Green Bay Packers in a contest that featured the lowest recorded on-field temperature in NFL history (−13 °F [−25 °C]) and became known as the “Ice Bowl.”
