Before we begin, I would love to remind you of our August Training Camp special subscription offer to new annuals. This month, our best price of the year is available where you can lock in a year of Sturmstack for $5.33 a month ($64 annually). It ends when August ends. Jump on it!
I feel it.
The presence of it is the annual sign that we have made it to football season.
It is there, I promise. And when I arrive yet again, I feel a small twinge to remind me of it all existing.
It is hope. Just a twinge, but it is there. There is hope and maybe even a small amount of belief again.
It wasn’t long ago that the concept of hope felt hilarious as this football team walked out of its 2025 season looking a very long ways off. They had failed to really move things in the right direction after a 2024 that was just flat awful all the way through. In two years, they have won just 14 of the 34 games they have played and that means that only eight NFL teams have won less since 2023 than Dallas.
Still, it feels different out here. They look like they might be worth our time this year.
Am I saying that I have the audacity to tell you that things feel possible again?
Hope is here in Ventura?
I come to you this morning from Ventura, California as we begin the 1,000th post of my #Sturmstack career right here in this familiar place again. I wrote a paragraph last year that still fits properly here:
It is a place I have grown to love over the years and I have the Dallas Cowboys to thank for it. I tell people all the time that I would live here someday and I absolutely would – not so sure my wife agrees, but I have several years to work on that part. Heck, I suppose if you added up 26 different camps, I might have a year worth of nights in this very hotel that is 10 seconds from an ocean with the mountains on the other side and feel reachable with a Driver. The high temperature this week is 72 degrees and the low is 58 (in 2026, there is a heatwave where it looks like next weekend could get us to 82 with lows just around 65). Each day’s temperature is exactly the same and there is little variance over the entire year. You can wear a hoodie and shorts every day of the year. As someone who has lived both in the extreme heat and the extreme cold, it is very much my happy medium.
This, since 2001, is where I set up camp to cover the Dallas Cowboys yet again. I am only here for a week this year, but when you do something 26 times, it feels a bit like home. Those of us who do this every single year know the area pretty well. The Cowboys are a 10-minute drive over to Oxnard that takes us past two enjoyable local golf courses and a drive down the water. It is all so familiar that I even know where to look out for the police who are shooting radar from time to time.
It is beautiful out here and it always is. It makes me think that perhaps this can be a factor in my disposition. If they can distract you with sunshine and ocean serenity, maybe you will get confused about the football.
But, alas, I think the Cowboys are in for a fun year. Maybe the problem is me.
To those of you who are new to the “Off to Oxnard” missive that starts every single training camp for many years, this is a piece that I do annually to review something we like to call “Dallas Cowboys Reality.” In fact, since this is post 1,000, I might as well offer you the chance to go back in time if you so choose:
There are many more out there if you simply use Pre-Sturmstack searching efforts you can find the 2019 version easily right here.
I am back because this is who I am and this is what I do. I did not know in 1998 when I started this career in Dallas that I would still be doing roughly the same thing in 2026, but God is good and has bless me with a nice stable career in a great city following wonderful stories.
One of them – believe it or not – is that I plan on seeing the other side of this mountain. I believe that a journey I started when I turned 26 will be concluded by the time I end it.
Well, I just turned 54. It is probably OK for me to start wondering if I got carried away when I promised that “someday we’ll go all the way.” My clock is ticking.
You? Well, I don’t know your age, but it largely goes in three camps.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.