Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

After being considered one of the top teams in the NFL for two decades, the Dallas Cowboys have failed to make the playoffs for the last three seasons. And now the Cowboys have the worst record in the NFL.

The Cowboys' precipitous fall from the ranks of the league's elite is more than the story of a good team gone bad. It is the story of a myth that died.

A myth grew up around the Cowboys that dubbed them America's Team, a symbol for all that was good and heroic about the nation.

While teams like the Oakland Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers were considered the bad guys, the Cowboys were clean cut, law-abiding and patriotic.

The Cowboys had everything, including a dream quarterback named Roger Staubach. Staubach had served his country in the navy after graduating from Annapolis.

Coach Tom Landry, the team's stoic and brilliant tactician, did television advertisements for Bibles and spoke of his personal relationship with Jesus.

The Cowboys' cheerleaders even visited American troops in South Korea. All of these elements contributed to the label and built the myth of America's Team. The myth also led to an image of invincibility.

But when you scraped away the layers of rhetoric and the mass of promotion churned out by Dallas's publicity department, what you had was a decent team that won more games than it lost.

Even in their hey day the Cowboys did not attain greatness. They only won two Superbowls. They lost three. Not a dynasty by any stretch of the imagination.

Now, the gap between the myth of invincibility and the reality in the standings has grown so huge that the myth can no longer be sustained.

Dallas isn't even Texas' Team anymore. The Houston Oilers have surpassed Dallas in attendence the past two years. "Luv Ya Blue" signs can be found all over the state.

The Cowboys have won a grand total of two games this year and have lost 11. Dallas and the once-mighty Green Bay Packers are together at the bottom of the NFL.

The few fans that bother to show up at Texas Stadium these days literally wear bags over their heads. Sixty-four percent of those polled by the Dallas Times Herald recently called for Landry to ride his horse into the sunset and leave the Cowboys.

Get Out of Town

Thanks for the memories, but get out of town.

How does Landry respond to charges that his unwillingness to modernize his coaching style has led to the Cowboys demise? What does it mean, Tom, that the Cowboys have been relegated to the dung heap of professional football?

"It means the NFL draft system works," Landry told Sports Illustrated recently.

This answer would be adequate if the Cowboys had made no pretenses to being anything more than your run-of-the-mill football team. It is true that the NFL's egalitarian draft system weighs heavily against perennial winners and that the lack of new talent into an organization can lead to its demise.

But until recently America's Team was able to overcome this handicap. The mysterious Cowboy computer and superb scouting staff annually picked those diamonds-in-the-rough, like cornerback Everson Walls, who other teams overlooked.

And the crafty Cowboys could always finagle a higher draft pick from their dull-witted opponents and get great players like Randy White and Tony Dorsett.

Something happened to the Cowboys ability to draft top players during the 1980 s. With the notable exception of Herschel Walker, the Cowboys' draftees have looked more like second-string players for an arena football team than the heirs to a dynasty.

Eventually, the Cowboys will come out of their tailspin and become a winning team again. I'm a Cowboys fan, and I certainly hope that they do.

But a rejuvinated Cowboys squad will have to fend for itself in the rough and tumble NFL without the protection of a myth or the illusion of being America's Team.