DESPISING DALLAS\America has learned to hate its own team.

Byline: Tim Madigan Fort Worth Star-Telegram 

How do the Dallas Cowboys play in Peoria? Listen to a guy named Jim, a recent caller to a sports talk show on radio station WMBD in the Illinois city.

"There's winning with class and losing with class," Jim said the day after the Cowboys' 38-27 victory over the Green Bay Packers sent Jerry Jones, Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, et al., to a third Super Bowl in four years. "America's Team just showed America how to win with no class."

It didn't stop there. Other callers expanded on Jim's vitriol, blasting the Cowboys for acts ranging from tackle Erik Williams' hit-'em-from-behind block to receiver Irvin's naughty language on postgame national television, to, well, just about everything.

Actually, WMBD host Dave Snell said, the anti-Dallas sentiment in Peoria has appeared to be building for some time. As the always high-profile Cowboys continue to win, as their fans continue to celebrate and their merchandise continues to outpace all other National Football League teams, the anti-Cowboys sentiment grows.

And after the Packer game, Snell said, Cowboys haters "finally had something that allowed them to vent. There's been more anti-Dallas Cowboy talk here in the last year than in the 15 years I've worked here. The postgame stuff on Sunday just gave people the vehicle to vent that they had been waiting for."

Make no mistake, Cowboys haters nationwide are venting away on radio talk shows in Peoria, in Billings, Mont., in Bangor, Maine, in homes and barrooms, in newspaper columns.

As the team prepares for a Sunday date with the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX, Cowboys fans remain as loyal and rabid as any. Local fans angrily swamped phone lines of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last week after a newspaper columnist suggested that head coach Barry Switzer resign after the Super Bowl.

And, to be sure, not everyone in Peoria, Billings and Bangor bashes the Cowboys and their winning ways. Aikman and Smith jerseys proliferate on the streets of Peoria. In Bangor, there's the story of the guy with the Cowboys telephones and lamp shades, whose rooms are decorated in metallic blue. In Billings, former Cowboys official Gil Brandt, a part-time Montana native, is a frequent talk show guest.

But among a sizable chunk of the football world, it has become fashionable to despise the team with the star on its helmet - loudly.

"This past Monday, we were trying to gauge feelings about the game and most everybody, I would say, was anti-Dallas," said Dale Duff, host of a Monday Morning Quarterback talk show segment on WZON radio in Bangor. "I think people are tired of the Cowboys and their 'America's Team' theme."

In Billings, Cowboys haters outnumber Cowboys diehards by about 3-to-1, said Dave Bingham, host of a sports talk show on KBLG radio in Montana's largest city.

"We're probably right in tune with the rest of the country," Bingham said.

The sources of the ill will are no secret, those commentators say. And, no, don't blame it all on Cowboys owner Jones. Clearly, the Cowboys have become victims of their own success, are now crossways with America's love of the underdog and today inspire the same type of antagonism once directed toward the smug, successful New York Yankees.

"People just want to see somebody else win," said Duff, the Bangor radio host.

Even Rich Dalrymple can relate. Growing up in Pittsburgh, he disliked the Cowboys, too, "because they were so good," said Dalrymple, now the Cowboys' public relations director.

"I didn't like Roger Staubach," Dalrymple said. "They won and won and won. Any team that people have strong feelings about, one way or another, is a team that has had great success. You don't have people getting emotional and stirred up over a team that's mediocre.

"No team has won Super Bowls under two different owners," Dalrymple said. "No team has won Super Bowls under three different head coaches, like we have a chance to do this year. . . . That will give cause for envy and some negatives."

But there is little doubt that owner Jones, and his swashbuckling style, is responsible for much of the mounting national wrath. Talk show hosts in the hinterlands say the anti-Cowboys sentiment began to intensify in the past year, as Jones struck renegade marketing deals with Nike and American Express and paid $35 million for Deion Sanders, Jones' co-star in those Pizza Hut commercials.

"I've had people call in and say, 'I'll never eat a double-stuffed crust pizza again,' or, 'If I hadn't got Nikes for Christmas, I would have gotten rid of them,' " said Snell, the radio host in Peoria. "Just the Cowboys thing with Nike. All the endorsements and Jerry Jones. . . .

"Everybody loves the underdog," Snell says, "and when the winner has outspoken people on top of that, they're a natural target."

Then, on Jan. 14, in the NFC Championship Game against the Packers, the Cowboys' Williams injured a Green Bay player with a block that, although legal, wasn't exactly sportsmanlike, and Irvin singed the airwaves in postgame interviews. Little matter that earlier that day, the Steelers' Greg Lloyd trashed a live TV audience with the mother of all swear words.

Lloyd's team hasn't won two Super Bowls this decade. Lloyd doesn't play with Deion. Lloyd doesn't work for Jerry Jones. And radio station switchboards across the land were ablaze.

Not that this generation of Cowboys acrimony is anything new.

"Back in the old days," Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell wrote last week, "it was fun to hate the Cowboys. Really hate 'em. You could convince yourself that Tom Landry was too cold, Roger Staubach too pious and Tony Dorsett too vain."

Then came the "America's Team" moniker, which poured more salt in the wounds of those who cringed as Cowboys victories mounted under Landry. But it was image makers at NFL Films, not the Cowboys, who came up with the audacious term in the late 1970s.

NFL Films' "photographers would come back every week and when they'd look at the films of our road games, there would be more blue in the stadium than the color of the home team," remembered Tex Schramm, the Cowboys president and general manager before Jones took over the team in 1989. "On the road there seemed to be an aura. They kept seeing it and talking about it, and on the highlight film they went with it."

That celebrated Cowboys mystique somehow survived the lean years at the end of Landry's long tenure as head coach, and a 1-15 start under Jones and Landry's successor, Jimmy Johnson. Then, as Cowboys victories quickly mounted, so did the merchandising sales, and the number of blue and white jerseys in enemy stadiums, and cries of Mooooooose whenever Cowboys fullback Daryl "Moose" Johnston touched the ball during road games.

"I travel by bus, so I'm on the ground a lot, and Dallas really has more fans nationwide than anybody else," said Fox Network football analyst John Madden. "When Dallas plays on the road, there are more people in their hotel lobby - 50 times more - than any other team."

In Billings, for example, Brandt helped KBLG radio obtain a jersey autographed by Smith for a recent giveaway.

"I have had busy shows, but that was one of my top five busiest shows of all time," Bingham, the Billings talk show host, said of the Cowboys football promotion. "People were just going nuts about it."

But lately, the Cowboys naysayers are also having their say.

It's the Yankees thing.

"A lot of people loved the Yankees and a lot of people disliked the Yankees just because they've been so successful," said veteran broadcaster Jack Buck, who will call the Super Bowl for CBS Radio. As for the Cowboys, Buck said: "Now, if people dislike 'em they'll seize any excuse, any dirty play on the field, a dirty word on television, dances by Deion."

It's the Jerry Jones thing.

"Now, the fun is gone," lamented Boswell, one of the nation's pre-eminent sports columnists. "Because the respect is gone. The new Cowboys don't seem to stand for anything. Except the desire to find a store that sells an even bigger diamond-encrusted wristwatch.

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Photo (1--color) The perceived arrogance of Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin and his teammates have irked many football fans across the nation. (2--color) Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer (3) While many football fans nationwide have grown weary of the Cowboys and their winning ways, the Dallas faithful remain as rabid as ever. Associated Press