How Dallas went from the Steers to the Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys star, the cheerleaders, the colors, and the name have all become iconic. The franchise itself is known as “America’s team”. It’s hard to imagine it having that same impact with a name like the Dallas Steers. Yet, they were that…for a short time.

How the Dallas Cowboys got their name

The first Dallas football team was actually the Dallas Texans in 1952, but they did so terribly awful that the city was left teamless for the next seven years. In 1959, Dallas was given an NFL expansion team, with wealthy oilman Chris Murchison as the owner. His original idea was to name the team the Dallas Steers, but fortunately, the name was short-lived.

General manager Tex Schramm had many great ideas for the Dallas franchise, and one of them was to change the name to anything but castrated cattle. Murchison then came up with the name Dallas Rangers, which he said “was a name for a football team if there ever was one”. It’s definitely an upgrade from Steers, but unfortunately for him, the name Dallas Rangers was already taken by the Dallas baseball team, which would make for quite the media (and general) confusion.

Schramm insisted on a change and Murchison agreed. The two (Murchison, hesitantly) came up with the Dallas Cowboys and that they remained for the start of the first game in 1960. In 1965, when the Dallas Rangers moved to Canada, Murchison attempted to revive the Dallas Rangers football team, but it was too late. By then, they’d already started to become a legend as the Cowboys. The name has stuck ever since.