FORT WORTH, Texas — The lowest point of the Dallas Cowboys in the last 25 years starts with the San Francisco 49ers, and a specific moment that featured the original "X" thrown up by someone long before Dez Bryant made it fashionable.
Bryant is credited as the creative genius who made "throw up the X" a thing, but video evidence conclusively says it is actually a different Dallas Cowboy.
Former Cowboys safety George Teague is the first to have made the famous cross-arm sign, and he just happened to do it after the most necessary unnecessary hit in the history of the franchise that was at its lowest point.
"I did throw up the X," Teague said via text this week. "Have been telling people that for years. Was throwing X's in college."
On Sept. 24, 2000, the Cowboys lost to the 49ers, 41-24, in the infamous "Terrell Owens Star Game."
You can lobby for another candidate or two, but watching T.O. celebrate on the star at Texas Stadium is the lowest point of the Cowboys since their last Super Bowl win.
T.O. openly taunted the Cowboys in their building and there was nothing Emmitt Smith, Larry Allen, Troy Aikman or Darren Woodson could do about it.
Late in the fourth quarter of the game, after T.O. caught his second TD pass of the day, he sprinted from the back of the end zone to the star at midfield to celebrate.
He had already done this once earlier in the game.
As T.O. ran towards midfield, Teague snapped.
"The truth is I really don't know why I did it," Teague said in an interview for my book, "Texas Stadium: America's Home Field," published in 2008.
"People laugh when I say this, but I kinda blacked out when he started running towards the middle of the field."
Owens told me that Teague "whiffed" on his hit; video shows that Teague didn't crush Owens, but Owens felt him.
After the ensuing melee was over, Teague was ejected.
As he walked toward the Texas Stadium tunnel, and the locker room, the remaining fans cheered Teague. He stopped, looked skyward, and "threw up the X."
After he walked into the locker room, he saw teammate Darren Woodson by himself. Woodson had been ejected earlier in the game.
"What the hell happened to you?" Woodson asked Teague.
"I got tossed," Teague said. "I ran Owens."
"It's about time somebody did something," Woodson said.
Years later I asked Owens what he remembered about those incidents.
"Most of all, I remember the negative reaction and the negative attention I got from it," he said. "I knew my intentions from it. Prior to me knowing the real history of Texas Stadium, I didn't get the true sense of it until after I had done it."
This was the first season under first-year coach Dave Campo; everyone realized the dynasty of the Cowboys was long over but no one knew just how bad this was all going to turn.
Teague played one more season with the Cowboys, and retired after 2001 to conclude a nine-year NFL career.
He's still best known for his play for the University of Alabama in the 1993 Sugar Bowl when he caught Miami receiver Lamar Thomas from behind on a long pass play and stripped him.
Teague's second-most famous play is easily his hit on T.O. on The Star. Teague just never received any credit for "Throwing Up the X."
"Think of it like a button with the X," he said this week. "It means no, it isn't allowed. It can be applied to multiple areas, maybe the run, the pass, the kick, wasn't allowed. In this case, being on the Star wasn't allowed."
The Cowboys drafted Dez Bryant in 2010. Not long after Dez started to "Throw Up the X," after scoring touchdowns. The gesture became his signature, mimicked by opposing players, and copied by kids, including Spelling Bee champions.
"The X is for all the defenses," Bryant told The NFL Network in 2014. "I'm the guy to watch."
He said the gesture is to "'X out' all of the bad, all of the negativity that ever approached me."
At this point the gesture is his.
But history, and video evidence, says "Throw Up the X" started with George Teague, at the lowest point of the Dallas Cowboys in the last 25 years.
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