In the storied history of our Dallas Cowboys, there is a short list of “sacred” jersey numbers: 8, 12, 22, 33, 54, 73, 74 and certainly 88. All of those numbers make up most of the Cowboys great ROH/HOF members- Staubach, Aikman, Emmitt, Bob Hayes, Tony D, Randy White, Larry Allen, Bob Lily, Drew Pearson, and Michael Irvin. Those numbers are legendary. Some of those numbers are so special no one very wears them. Like #12 and #74.
But I wish we would stop forcing some of these “famous” numbers on young potential star players and let them create some new numbers without a legend attached.
For example- why does every potential star WR have to be #88? I felt a little bad for players like Dez and Cedee Lamb being forced to wear 88. I could see a young player thinking, “I don’t want to be the next Michael Irvin- I want to make a new number famous- like wearing #87”.
Maybe Tyler Smith doesn’t need to wear Larry Allen’s #73 so he can create a new legend wearing #67 or some such number. I like that Micah Parsons has made #11 his own.
Where do you stand on this? Should young high draft picks for the Cowboys be expected to wear numbers like #88 or #73? Or should they be allowed to create their own legend? I’m in favor of letting a young kid create their own legend around whatever number they want. It would be cool to create a new legend around a different number- like 87 or 13, or 25….etc.
