The term America's Team is a popular nickname in American sports that refers to the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League. The nickname originated with the team's 1978 highlight film, where the narrator opens with the following introduction: They appear on television so often that their faces are as familiar to the public as presidents and movie stars. They are the Dallas Cowboys, "America's Team."

The term is recognized and often used by media outlets, including ESPN, Yahoo!, HBO Sports, and Sports Illustrated.

On their Top 10 show, the NFL Network named the Dallas Cowboys' "America's Team" as the #1 nickname in NFL history.

When it comes to the gridiron, the Dallas Cowboys are in a league of their own. The Cowboys brand, worth $208 million, is $128 million more valuable than that of the average NFL team. Reason: Jerry Jones big push to appeal to fans not just in Texas but across the country since purchasing the team in 1989. So popular are the Cowboys, whove become synonymous with Americas Team, that in 2002 they became the first and to date only team to opt out of the NFLs merchandising program and instead take control of their own apparel rights. Jones success in the owners suite has been staggering. Since he bought the team, the compound annual growth of its enterprise value (equity plus net debt) has been 13 percent, which is 63 percent better than the S&P 500 as a whole.

The Dallas Cowboys are in an amazing 4th place in total Brand value World Wide. The Yankees brand in 1st place is worth $328 million (21% of their $1.6 billion total team value), while Manchester United name in 2nd is to be worth $285 million (16% of their $1.835 billion value).

Rounding out the rest were 3rd place Real Madrid ($240 million), the Dallas Cowboys in 4th place ($208 million) and FIFA World Club Cup winners Barcelona in 5th ($180 million).

The franchise holds the record for most Super Bowl appearances (8), corresponding to most NFC championships (8). The Cowboys are the only NFL team to record 20 consecutive winning seasons (1966--1985) which they only missed the playoffs twice (1974 and 1984), an NFL record that remains unbroken and unchallenged. It remains one of the longest winning streaks in all of professional sports.

During the first half of the 1960s, televised NFL games grew exponentially in popularity. In an effort to capitalize on this success, the league began shopping around for a team to host an annual Thanksgiving Day game in addition to the game hosted by the Detroit Lions. Every single team turned down the offer on the grounds that scheduling a Thursday game so late in the season would be too disruptive. Every team, that is, except for the Dallas Cowboys. The Genius in General Manager Tex Schram recognized this as a golden opportunity for the Cowboys to establish their own Thanksgiving Day game tradition. Clearly, his decision was a prescient one. The game caught on and has become wildly popular through out the country & constructive for the term America's Team.

Since the inaugural game in 1966, the Cowboys have hosted a Thanksgiving Day game every year except for 1975 and 1977. The '75 and '77 Thanksgiving Day games were both hosted by the St. Louis Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals). This was done as a result of complaints issued by the other NFL teams. They felt that Dallas enjoyed an unfair advantage by hosting the Thanksgiving Day game because it gave them a 10-day break before their next game (as opposed to 7 days for the rest of the league). The ratings for the Cardinals-hosted games, however, were poor. As a result, the NFL (no doubt at the urging of CBS, the league's official network at the time) invited Dallas to resume their duties as host of the classic game. Tex Schram accepted the offer, but only on the condition that the game never again be moved out of Dallas. And so the much-loved, much-anticipated Turkey Day classic resumed in Dallas and continues to delight fans to this day across America Annually.

Columnist Peter King had originally speculated during the Thanksgiving classic-Home team controversy that when the current schedule rotation ends after 2009, both the Cowboys' and Lions' home Thanksgiving games will be reassessed by the league and possibly revoked-- the Lions' for their poor performance, and the Cowboys because of a perceived unfair home field advantage that requires the visiting team to both travel and prepare for a game only four days after their previous one. This speculation never materialized, for obvious reason and the 2010 NFL season featured no changes to the permanent hosting of the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Classic.

In 2003, NFL Films released a DVD collection chronicling the Dallas Cowboys franchise entitled The Dallas Cowboys: The Complete History of America's Team 1960-2003. In 2008, NFL Films would release an updated DVD of The History of the Dallas Cowboys.

The popularity of the Cowboys as America's Team has been supported somewhat by such NFL records as "Team with Most Consecutive Sold Out Games", a streak of 160 home and away games (including playoffs) that began on December 23, 1990, at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium and came to an end on December 24, 1999, in a Christmas Eve game against the New Orleans Saints in the Louisiana Super Dome. Other examples are the NFL games featuring the Cowboys that result in record-breaking ratings at the time of broadcast, such as 7 of the 8 Super Bowl games featuring the Cowboys and the NFC Championship Game between the Cowboys and 49ers, the only non-Super Bowl NFL game to be ranked in the Top 45 Primetime Telecasts of All Time.