"Glory Hole" + "Secret Sauce" = Cowboys' Bitter Disappointment or, Finally, a Happy Meal?

   Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions – on a sesame-seed bun.

   The year was 1974 and as an impressionable 10-year-old punk I was wide-eyed about fast-food in general and McDonald’s new hamburger in specific. It was a double-decker delight. And it was trumpeted into our lives with the coolest, catchiest theme song on TV. (No, we hadn't yet invented a DVR to skip the ads.)

   Had to have the special sauce. The special sauce made the Big Mac. Everyone in every home on every sandwich attempted to duplicate the special, secret sauce. And now, just like that, the Cowboys have the secret sauce?

   Indeed, at least according to team vice president Stephen Jones, honing his quirky hyperbole in preparation for sooner-than-later filling Dad’s shoes.

   “Obviously we feel like we have a great organization in the Cowboys but we can always be better,” he said. “We look for ways to be better. We do that both on the field and off the field. We’re convinced we’ve got the ‘secret sauce’ to put this thing back together again and win championships.”

   Wait, what the what?!

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   I mean, Dez Bryant is elite and Tony Romo can be spectacular and DeMarco Murray and Sean Lee and DeMarcus Ware and Jason Witten and Monte Kiffin and … C’mon. Secret sauce?

   As you play with the bland appetizer on your plate that is tonight's Cowboys-Texans pre-season finale at AT&T Stadium and prepared to dig into the Cowboys’ 2013 entree, you can’t possibly ignore the recent meals that have left us with a bitter taste in our mouths, if not altogether nauseated or perhaps violently ill.

   Since they won Super Bowl XXX after the ’95 season, the Cowboys are 138-134. Secret sauce?

   In the last 16 years they’ve won exactly one playoff game. Secret sauce?

   They last two seasons they’ve lost NFC East Championship Games and missed the post-season with 8-8 records. Secret sauce?

   Only three NFC teams – Lions, Vikings and Redskins – haven’t been to a Super Bowl more recently than the Cowboys. SECRET SAUCE?

   The Cowboys are in the midst of by far the franchise’s longest championship drought. Secret ... sauce?

   If “secret sauce” is code for “friggin’ desperate”, then I totally dig it and Stephen is right to channel his inner Ronald McDonald. But, it’s got to be one of the strangest rallying cries in all sports history.

   “Just Win, Baby!”

   “Luv Ya Blue!”

   “Orange Crush.”

   “Dirty Bird.”

   “Who Dat?!”

    Last year's Cowboys' motto: "Glory Hole!'
   And, um, “Secret Sauce!”?

   In 2012 – after years of cloaking the recipe in shirt-stained mystery – McDonald’s admitted its sauce wasn’t so special, or secret. The ho-hum ingredients: Mayonnaise, sweet pickle relish, yellow mustard, vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder and paprika.

   Of course at the dawn of the Big Mac 38 years ago the Cowboys weren’t oozing the special sauce either. In ’74 – after nine consecutive post-season appearances – they finished 8-6 … and missed the playoffs.

   Happy Meal, anyone?

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