That never was more obvious than during the past several days.

Once again, the Cowboys poached the media agenda even as they prepared for a team from the nation's No. 1 market that has four more playoff victories this calendar year than Dallas has in the past 12.

Amazing, really. And still big business.

To no one's surprise, Giants-Cowboys scored hefty ratings, drawing 15.4 percent of households in major markets - a season best for a Sunday night - including 39 percent in Dallas and 18 in New York.

(Cowboys games rank 1-2-3 on Sunday nights this season.)

Helping to drive the ratings was the latest soap opera at Valley Ranch, a venue that long has rivaled Southfork for Dallas-centric melodrama.

Various media outlets reported late in the week on tensions between Terrell Owens and Tony Romo / Jason Witten, which banished Plaxico Burress to the pregame show witness protection program.

The line to take shots at T.O. stretched out the studio doors at ESPN, Fox, CBS and NBC. Read 'em all on my blog, if you must.

But one of my favorites was from Fox's Jimmy Johnson, who has some experience in this area.

"I don't need to give Jerry Jones advice nor can I give him advice," he said, "but I'm going to give him some anyway: Cut bait. Just cut it."

Seven-plus hours later, NBC's Peter King added: "Terrell Owens is a cancer on the Dallas Cowboys. They won't win until he's gone."

Then ... the Cowboys won, opening the door for Owens to turn the tables, which he did at the expense of ESPN's Ed Werder, a newspaper reporter on the Cowboys beat in the mid-1990s and one of the first journalists to chronicle the locker-room intrigue last week.

Before the game, T.O. told NBC's Tiki Barber it was "all false, all lies." Afterward, he told Andrea Kremer, "I think it was a lack of unprofessionalism [sic] on Ed Werder's behalf just to come up with some of that stuff. Honestly, I don't know where none of this stuff came from."

That was ridiculous, of course, and as Owens said it, Witten and Romo, standing alongside him, grinned uncomfortably.

Later, the NFL Network's Deion Sanders weighed in on Werder:

"Why couldn't he be a liar? He's over at another network fighting with two other journalists to have a name for himself in the capacity that he is in. So the most crap that they can come up with, they get their names mentioned."

Said ESPN: "We stand by our reporting."

Werder spoke to The Dallas Morning News yesterday, saying, "I was shocked. I've been covering the Cowboys since 1989 and I have never been put in a position like that. It was a first."

Werder added, "[Owens] wants to know who in the locker room I talked to who obviously doesn't respect him, and I won't ever tell him that."

NBC understandably lapped all this up, from Barber and Kremer - neither of whom pressed Owens on his "all lies" lie - to John Madden and Al Michaels, who accurately predicted an essential truth:

That a win would make it all go away.

After Kremer's awkward but fascinating kumbaya interview, Michaels offered a nod to 1970s TV, back when the Cowboys actually won playoff games, and when their act was fresh.

"Well, we brought back 'Dallas' the TV show," he said, "and we also brought back 'Love, American Style' tonight. Beautiful!"

HBO spotlights integration

HBO's latest documentary, "Breaking the Huddle: The Integration of College Football," which debuts at 10 tonight, covers an impressive amount of ground on a sprawling, complicated topic.

Some is familiar - such as the 1970 mauling of Alabama by Sam Cunningham and USC - and some is fresh and amusing, as when Texan Bubba Smith is exiled by segregation to Michigan State and endures culture shock in the form of the culinary mystery that is matzah.

But in light of recent events, perhaps the most poignant segment features Wilbur Hackett Jr. On Oct. 18, he became a laughingstock on YouTube when, as an SEC official, he inexplicably leveled South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia in the middle of a play.

It turns out he was a pioneer among blacks in the SEC as a Kentucky linebacker, and once memorably sacked Ole Miss quarterback Archie Manning.

"When I look around and I see 11 African-American Football players on defense, and I look over there and there's a black quarterback," Hackett says in the show, "it makes me feel good, just because I know where it was and where it is now."