Steelers Rout Cowboys in the Endorsement Game Too

Self-esteem isn’t all the Dallas Cowboys lost last January, when Pittsburgh outlasted them 38-34 in the Super Bowl. Being the second-best team in pro football can also cost you big bucks.

Kevin McCarthy, a WFAA radio talk show host who moonlights as a player rep for several Cowboys, says his clients lost in “the tens of thousands” of dollars in endorsement contracts by their failure to score one more touchdown that afternoon in Miami. McCarthy says the “name” players like Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, and his chief client, Harvey Martin, probably haven’t been affected that much; but the so-called “second tier” – Randy White, Too Tall Jones, Billy Joe Dupree, Cliff Harris, etc. – became eminently less marketable. “Companies want to be able to say corporation X is number one just like the Pittsburgh Steelers,” says McCarthy. “It’s an identification thing. It’s hard to say how much a player loses by coming in second, because it’s really a matter of the offers out there that would have come to him had the team won the Super Bowl.”