"January can’t get here fast enough for the Dallas Cowboys.

It all starts this afternoon in Oxnard, Calif., when Jerry Jones gives his annual camp kickoff state-of-the-Cowboys pep talk with trusty sidekick Wade Phillips waving his pompoms alongside.

And don’t think the Hard Knocks cameras won’t be recording every mushy moment of it.

There’s six weeks of Camp Cupcake II — or Camp Marshmallow, as Phillips renamed it over the weekend — spliced around four exhibition games. That’ll be followed by 17 weeks of further preliminaries to finally get to the only thing that matters around here: the playoffs.

Win a playoff game and Phillips probably keeps his job. Get booted out again in the first round and he’d best have his résumé up to date with stamps on the envelopes."