DALLAS — There's nothing flashy about the Dallas Cowboys' star logo. And yet, it still manages to represent the franchise's decades of glitz and glam, Super Bowl wins and all the pomp and circumstance attached to "America's Team."
Sometimes less is, indeed, more.
The Cowboys debuted in 1960 with the single blue star logo, seemingly a nod to Texas' moniker as the Lone Star State. A silver outline was added to the star a few years later, but the design remained mostly the same, and has ever since.
And the man responsible for the logo? Jack Eskridge, the team's first equipment manager.
According to the Cowboys' website, Eskridge, who died in 2013 at the age of 89, was one of Tom Landry's first hires, joining the franchise in 1959, before the Cowboys ever played a game.
One of his first tasks was helping come up with a logo. A blue star was the winning choice, and Eskridge later added the white border to give it a 3-D effect.
The Cowboys of the 1960s also had a cartoon-style logo of a football player riding a horse, but it never gained permanent traction. (Although, Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy has been known to rock the old logo on a hoodie on gamedays).
After Eskridge died, Texas Monthly called his star design a stroke of marketing brilliance. They also imagined the oddity of the Cowboys opting for something more cartoonish or bland (a basic "D," for instance).
As much as anything, the star came to define the most valuable franchise in sports, even when that value hasn't always translated to on-field success. And for all the extravagance of AT&T Stadium, the Cowboys' sprawling training facility and shopping development in Frisco might rival it. It has a fitting name: The Star.
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