Wow Boys or Wowboys (Dallas Cowboys nickname)

“Wow Boys” was the nickname given to the 1940 Stanford Indians college football team that went undefeated and won the 1941 Rose Bowl. The use of the T-formation by the “Wow Boys” helped to revolutionize college football.
 
The Dallas Cowboys have infrequently been referred to as the “Wowboys” (or “Wow Boys”) when the team is winning and causing people to say “Wow!” The nickname “Wowboys” has been cited in print since at least 1972.
 
   
Wikipedia: Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team that plays in the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). They are headquartered in suburban Irving, Texas, which lies between Fort Worth and Dallas. The team plays its home games at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, which finished construction in time for the 2009 season. The Cowboys joined the NFL as a 1960 expansion team. The team’s national following might best be represented by its NFL record of consecutive games in front of sold-out stadiums. The Cowboys’ streak of 160 sold-out regular and post-season games began in 1990, and included 79 straight sellouts at their former home, Texas Stadium, and 81 straight sell-outs on the road.
 
An article from Forbes Magazine, dated September 2, 2009, lists the Cowboys as the most valuable sports franchise in the United States, and second in the world (behind the United Kingdom’s Manchester United), with an estimated value of approximately $1.65 billion, ahead of the Washington Redskins ($1.6 billion) and the New England Patriots ($1.361 billion). They are also one of the wealthiest teams in the NFL, generating almost $269 million in annual revenue.

The Cowboys have been one of the most successful teams of the modern era. Founded in 1960, the Cowboys rank tied for second among all NFL franchises in Super Bowl victories and first in Super Bowl appearances. The Cowboys are the only NFL team to record 20 consecutive winning seasons (1966-1985), an NFL record that remains unbroken and unchallenged. It remains one of the longest winning streaks in all of professional sports history. In 2008 ESPN gave the Cowboys the top spot in the post-merger era power rankings.
   
Dallas SLANGUAGE
Wow Boys
Our football team.
   
OCLC WorldCat record
The Wow Boys; the story of Stanford’s historic 1940 football season, game by game.
Author: Cyclone Covey
Publisher: New York, Exposition Press [1957]
Edition/Format: Book : English : [1st ed.
   
Sports Illustrated
August 28, 1972
19th Hole: The Readers Take Over
(...)
THE COWBOYS’ HOME
Sirs:
Your article on Texas Stadium (Some Home on the Range, Aug. 14) was tops.
(...)
Sirs:
I relished your coverage of one heck of a stadium. From now on I’ll think of them as the Dallas Wowboys.
RANDY FIKE
Portland, Ore.
   
Google Books
God’s coach:
The hymns, hype, and hypocrisy of Tom Landry’s Cowboys
By Skip Bayless
New York, NY: Simon and Schuster
1990
Pg. 176:
Oh, those Wowboys.
   
OCLC WorldCat record
The wow boys : a coach, a team, and a turning point in college football
Author: James W Johnson; NetLibrary, Inc.
Publisher: Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
Edition/Format: eBook : Document : State or province government publication : English
   
Stanford Magazine (January/February 2007)
The Team That Changed the Game
University of Arizona journalism professor James W. Johnson documents and analyzes the 1940 Stanford football season down to a T—the T-formation, that is—in Wow Boys: A Coach, a Team, and a Turning Point in College Football (Univ. of Nebraska Press).
 
The T-formation, in which three backs line up behind the quarterback, had been all but discarded until coach Clark Shaughnessy adapted it and brought it west to Stanford. His emphasis on deception and speed rather than brute force revolutionized the game and led to further refinements evident in today’s wide-open offenses. ESPN in 2002 ranked the development of the T-formation No. 2 on a list of best sports innovations of all time.
 
Shaughnessy inherited a moribund program coming off a 1-7-1 season. The Stanford Daily, Johnson notes, was pessimistic about his prospects either of winning or re-engaging “one of the most indifferent student bodies on any campus.” Led by star quarterback Frankie Albert, ’42, and Shaughnessy’s sophisticated offensive schemes, the “Wow Boys” went undefeated and won the 1941 Rose Bowl.
     
Sports Illustrated
November 03, 2008
No More Wowboys
Tabbed by many in the preseason as a Super Bowl favorite, the star-studded Dallas Cowboys instead find themselves in a week-to-week struggle just to keep their postseason hopes alive
PETER KING
   
Dallas (TX) Observer - Sportatorium
Wowboys 37, Filthy Birds 21: My Top 10 Observations
By Richie Whitt in Dallas Cowboys
Sun., Oct. 25 2009 @ 8:00PM