text: Dallas remained one of the NFL's top teams for the remainder of the 1960s, easily winning their division in 1968 (with a 12–2 record) and in 1969 (with an 11–2–1 mark).  Each season, however, ended with a decisive loss to the Cleveland Browns. The Browns in turn lost in the NFL championship game to the Baltimore Colts and Minnesota Vikings in the 1968 and 1969 seasons respectively. The 1968 Colts and 1969 Vikings subsequently lost Super Bowl III and Super Bowl IV to the New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs, respectively. Repeated failures to achieve their ultimate goal earned the Cowboys the nickname "Next Year's Champions" and a reputation for not being able to "win the big one." Peter Gent, a wide receiver with Dallas from 1964 to 1968, later wrote a book called North Dallas Forty based on his observations and experiences with the team. This book was made into a movie of the same name in 1979. The book and movie depicted many of the team's players as carousing, drug-abusing partiers callously used by the team and then tossed aside when they became too injured to continue playing productively.
  In 1969, ground was broken on a new stadium for the Cowboys to replace the Cotton Bowl. Texas Stadium in Irving, a Dallas suburb, was completed during the 1971 season.
  At the end of the decade, the historians Robert A. Calvert, Donald E. Chipman, and Randolph Campbell wrote The Dallas Cowboys and the NFL, an inside study of the organization and financing of the team. A reviewer describes the Cowboys as a vital cog of "an industry that occupies an important segment of American time and attention . . . a sophisticated industry that has worked out complex statistics to select the best thrower of a forward pass. . . . [and] has reformed television habits . . . "
  1970s
  In the 1970s, the NFL underwent many changes as it absorbed the AFL and became a unified league, and the Cowboys underwent many changes as well. Meredith and Perkins retired in 1969 and new players were joining the organization, like Cliff Harris, and Pro Football Hall of Famers Rayfield Wright, Mike Ditka, Herb Adderley and Roger Staubach.
  1970: First Super Bowl appearance