I love watching documentaries.
As a speech therapist, I can’t help but watch documentaries through a different lens. While most viewers focus on performance, leadership, and grit, I pay close attention to how brain injury, cognition, and communication are portrayed. Netflix’s “The Gambler and His Cowboys” offers a compelling—and sobering—look at how concussion and dementia are discussed within high-risk, high-performance environments.
What stands out is not just the physical danger of the sport, but how neurological impairments quietly shape communication, decision-making, and identity long after the cameras stop rolling.
Because so much was covered in the documentary and I have so much to say about what I observed, I’m going to blog about this in a couple of different posts.
Dementia and America’s Hero
I was intrigued to learn from the documentary that Dallas adopted a reputation as a city of hate following the Kennedy assassination. The rise of the Dallas Cowboys as “America’s Team” changed that reputation, and the team’s coach, Tom Landry, was the catalyst for both the team’s success, and the turnaround of the city’s character.
Tom Landry’s impact stretched far; I grew up watching the Cowboys with my dad in rural Idaho. Landry was a revered World War II fighter pilot. His patriotism and leadership endeared him to the Dallas community and fans. Landry and his wife regularly attended Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas except for when the Cowboys played on Sundays, but even then, Landry wasn’t far from heaven. Proud Texans declared that the open roof in Cowboys Stadium enabled God to watch His favorite team.
Skip Bayless was a Dallas News columnist from 1979-1998 and had unprecedented access to the Cowboys. During the late 80’s, the Cowboys winning streak tumbled. Despite recruiting college standout Michael Irving in 1988, the team lost a dismal 13 games that same year. Bayliss reported that the team’s plunging record coincided with a noticeable dive in Landry’s memory. Landry couldn’t remember players’ names, he forgot the plays he’d just called, and he began falling asleep in meetings.
Memory decline is typical with age. Just like muscles, our memory and processing speed weakens the longer we live. When the memory loss interferes with activities of independent living, it enters into the realm of cognitive impairment, and then dementia. After 29 years with the Cowboys, it seems that even the leader of America’s Team was not immune from the cruel disease.
Landry’s cognitive decline was not widely known off the field. Faithful Texans may have stopped attending games, but to criticize Landry was akin to sacrilege. That is, unless you buy the team and are in the business of winning.
There’s a lot that went down in the transition of coaches (watch the documentary–it is so interesting!), but the instigator to remove Dallas’ beloved Tom Landry was Jerry Jones, an oilman from Arkansas who purchased the franchise in 1989. Interestingly, Jones has his own link to my field of study. His college dissertation was “The Role of Oral Communication in Modern-Day Intercollegiate Football.” Who knew?!
Jones made the terribly unpopular decision to crown Jimmy Johnson as the new head coach. Jones’ communication with Texans about the new leadership did not reflect the expertise of a Master’s level researcher, and both Johnson and Jones were villainized in the early days.
However, this is where the importance of effective communication cannot be understated. Players credited Jimmy Johnson’s vigor as a critical component of the team’s turnaround. Landry had shocked Irvin before Irvin’s first professional game with a flat “motivational” speech composed of, “Let’s get out there and keep this game close.” In contrast, Johnson galvanized the team with loud and animated charges. And what Johnson’s words didn’t communicate, his energetic body language did.
In the end, the marriage of Jones, researcher of the power of oral communication, and Johnson, master communicator and motivator, proved to be a magical combination. The intertwining impact of brain health and communication are clearly illustrated by contrasting the Cowboys’ dreadful records in the late 80’s (end of Landry’s era), with their back-to-back Superbowl championships just 3 years later (1992 and 1993, the height of Jimmy Johnson’s era).
A Cultural Shift Toward Brain Health
One of the most important takeaways from The Gambler and His Cowboys is the growing acknowledgment that brain health matters.
As a speech therapist, I see this documentary as an opportunity:
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To educate the public about dementia and its impact on all echelons of society
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To encourage earlier referrals to speech therapy to delay and decelerate cognitive decline
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To reframe communication support as performance optimization, not weakness
The Gambler and His Cowboys doesn’t just tell a story about sport—it tells a story of aging and the impact communication has on relationships. From a speech therapy perspective, it reinforces what clinicians have long known: how we think, speak, and connect matters just as much as how we perform.
If conversations like these lead even one person to seek evaluation after cognitive change, the impact extends far beyond the screen. If you or someone you know in the Utah County area are in need of cognitive therapy for dementia or head injury, let’s talk. Live Well Speech Therapy specializes in cognitive impairments in adults.
We accept private pay and most insurances. You can reach us via phone call or text at (801) 420-4083 or e-mail us at jackie@livewspeechtherapy.com.
