The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas, Texas metropolitan area, and play their home games in the suburb of Irving. They currently belong to the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Cowboys joined the NFL as a 1960 expansion team. The team is sometimes referred to colloquially as America's Team due to its having a large fanbase that lives outside its immediate local area (the term itself is derived from the title of the team's 1979 NFL Films highlight film).

The Cowboys are one of the most successful teams in the history of the NFL, holding the league records for most consecutive winning seasons (20, from 1966 to 1985) and most seasons with at least 10 wins (24). The team has earned the most postseason appearances (27, as of 2004, which includes another league record of 54 postseason games, winning 32 of them) and the most Super Bowl appearances (8). The Cowboys became the first team in NFL history to win 3 Super Bowls in just 4 years (a feat that has been matched only once since, by the New England Patriots), and are tied with the San Francisco 49ers and the Pittsburgh Steelers for having the most number of Super Bowl wins (5).

Uniform colors: White jerseys have royal blue numbers and lettering; colored jerseys feature a darker shade of blue as background (similar to that of the star logo shown to the upper right) with white numbers and lettering. By tradition, and unlike most NFL teams, the Cowboys normally wear their white jerseys at home (although they may wear their colored jerseys during special occasions). In the 2003 season, the Cowboys revived their 1962 throwback uniform (blue jersey with white sleeves) for special occasions such as Thanksgiving and a September 19, 2005 game against the Washington Redskins. That particular game was the Cowboys' first ever home game against the Redskins in which they opted to dress in their colored jerseys.
Helmet design: Silver background with a blue star (throwback helmet is white with a blue star)

Franchise history

1960s
Originally, the formation of an NFL expansion team in Texas was met with strong opposition by Washington Redskins owner, George Preston Marshall. Despite being located in the nation's capital, Marshall's Redskins had enjoyed a monopoly as the only NFL team to represent the Southern States of the US for several decades, so a new team in Texas was unwanted competition. This came as little surprise to would-be team owners, Clint Murchison, Jr. and Bedford Wynne, so to ensure the birth of their expansion team, the men bought the rights to the Redskins fight song, "Hail to the Redskins" and threatened to refuse to allow Marshall to play the song at games. Needing the song, which had become a staple for his "professional football team of Dixie", Marshall changed his tune, and the city of Dallas, Texas, was granted an NFL franchise on January 28, 1960. This early confrontation between the two franchises no doubt triggered what would become one of the more significant rivalries in the NFL, which continues even to this day.

The new Dallas owners, Murchison and Wynne, immediately hired Tex Schramm to be the general manager and Tom Landry to be the head coach. In the Cowboys' first season, they finished winless with a 0-11-1 record. The following year, the Cowboys made their first NFL draft selection, selecting Bob Lilly with the 13th pick in the draft. The year 1961 also saw the Cowboys' first victory, a 27-24 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers on September 17.

During the 1960s, the Cowboys continued to improve their team. Quarterback Don Meredith and running back Don Perkins joined the team and by 1966, the Cowboys had their first winning season (10-3-1; which began a record-setting streak of 20 straight winning seasons, unmatched by any other NFL team) and their first playoff appearance. Although the playoff game was a 34-27 loss to the Green Bay Packers, it marked the start of a record-setting eight consecutive playoff appearances. (The Cowboys would later match and extend that record, raising the bar to an NFL record 9 straight playoff appearances in 1983.) By the mid-60s, the Cowboys had become a powerful force in the NFL, sending eight players to the Pro Bowl including Cowboy legends: Bob Hayes, Chuck Howley, "Dandy" Don Meredith, Don Perkins, and future Pro Football Hall of Famers, Bob Lilly and Mel Renfro.

Similarly, the Cowboys were becoming an important part of the people of Dallas. For their first years, the Cowboys were always playing second fiddle to Lamar Hunt's Dallas Texans of the AFL because the Texans were the more established team and had the better record. But in 1963 when the Texans moved to Kansas City and became the Kansas City Chiefs, the Cowboys became the only professional football draw in town. By 1969, ground was being broken on a new stadium for the Cowboys to replace the Cotton Bowl. Texas Stadium in Irving, a Dallas County suburb, would be completed for the 1971 season. Since they didn't leave Dallas County, there were no moves to change the name of the team.

In 1967, the Cowboys finished with a 9-5 record and had their first playoff victory: a 52-14 affair over the Cleveland Browns. They went on to face the Green Bay Packers in the NFL Championship game. The game, which happened on December 31, 1967 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, turned out to be one of the coldest NFL games on record (about -13° F with a -40° wind chill). The Cowboys lost 21-17 on a one-yard quarterback sneak by Packers quarterback Bart Starr. The game would later come to be known as the "Ice Bowl.