Americans love a winner and that's not the Dallas Cowboys these days. The team from deep in the Republic of Texas has been replaced as the nation's most popular team.
Aaron Rodgers' Super Bowl-winning Green Bay Packers were picked by 22 percent of voters as their favorite team in the NFL, according to Public Policy Polling's newest national survey. The Cowboys finished second, with 11 percent of the vote, followed by the Bears, Giants and Steelers.
NFL Films famously gave the Cowboys the title of "America's Team" in a 1978 highlight film. The program opened up with this intro: "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."
A generation later, Dallas was actually picked as America's least favorite NFL team. The Cowboys got 22 percent of the negative vote, beating out the Chicago Bears' 8 percent and Green Bay's 7 percent for the title.
This was a bi-partisan pigskin vote: Republicans (60 percent), Democrats (44 percent) and independents (44 percent) all picked the Packers over the Cowboys.
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Other results:
- 41 percent of African-Americans list Michael Vick as their favorite quarterback; no one else got more than 13 percent of the vote. Only 2 percent of whites listed Vick as their favorite.
- Vick was voted the NFL's least popular quarterback, with 26 percent of the vote, beating out Ben Roethlisberger's 15 percent.
- Tim Tebow, as expected, edged out Eli Manning (12 percent) and his brother Peyton (10 percent) for the title of America's most popular quarterback. Tom Brady, Drew Brees and MVP favorite Aaron Rodgers finished next, with 6 percent of the vote.
– Peyton Manning received a 51 percent favorable opinion from voters. That edged out Tebow's 50 percent favorable rating for tops among quarterbacks.
