Plano fans of the Dallas Cowboys gathered at Legacy Hall on Sunday to watch as their favorite team, for lack of a better phrase, dropped the ball once again, losing their divisional-round game to the San Francisco 49ers.
For the demographic that frequents Plano’s Legacy West shopping center, this event was probably just background noise for their Sunday Brunch. Though hundreds of fans attended the watch party, the event vibe was surprisingly reserved. The fans' curbed enthusiasm bordered on detached ennui.
During last year’s World Cup final, Dallas soccer fans cheered on their teams and celebrated in the streets when Argentina won. The Cowboys are not the Argentina national football team, though. And Plano isn’t Dallas. A handful of fans at the Legacy West event were visibly enthusiastic, and that number grew as the night went on and bar tabs rose. But most of the Legacy West set seemed to be there for the same reasons we were: to take pictures. We’ve seen rowdier fans at golf tournaments.
As your conservative relatives have probably already told you, a ton of people are moving from California to Texas, and that demographic was represented at Legacy Hall. 49ers fans were few but loud, and they became increasingly unruly and cocky as their team’s chances kept looking better. At the end of the night, as the pro-Dallas majority was morosely filing out, the transplants defiantly refused to read the room. Some even stood outside the building and taunted Cowboys fans, who surely wept the whole way home in their self-driving Teslas.