Rarely do sportswriters resoundingly agree on a single topic.

Should pitchers be eligible for baseball's Most Valuable Player award? Is the designated hitter a good thing? Are hockey's Stanley Cup Playoffs too long? Should zone defense be allowed in the NBA? Should college football players receive pay for play? Do kickers and punters belong in the NFL Hall of Fame?

Ask ten sportswriters any of the above questions, and you're likely to get ten different opinions, all argued passionately and at great length.

Remarkably, it seems the fourth estate of the sporting world has found a topic on which every single member seems to agree. The 2001 Dallas Cowboys, in Year 1 of the post-Troy-Aikman era and Year 2 of head coach Dave Campo's regime, are going to be bad.

Really, really bad. We're talking cataclysmically terrible.

Let's start with Dan Pompeii of The Sporting News (TSN.com), who pegs the Cowboys as the NFL's worst team, and writes "The Cowboys will be trumped in every way imaginable."

Tom Oates of ESPN.com ESPN.com pulls no punches as he divides the NFC into five distinct groups: the favorites, the contenders, the pretenders, the hopefuls -- and the Cowboys.

Over on CNNSI.com, the legendary "Dr. Z" places the Cowboys squarely at 31st and last in the NFL in his pre-season Power Rankings, citing "everything collapsing around them [and] what should be the worst run defense in football."

You'd think that Mickey Spagnola of Pro Football Weekly and DallasCowboys.com, who also does radio and TV work for the team, would be more sympathetic, perhaps even a shade more optimistic. Think again; Spagnola says of the Cowboys, "Talk about starting from scratch ... Disaster looms."

In the 2001 Sports Illustrated NFL Preview issue, available on newsstands this week, an unidentified opposing team's scout sizes up the Cowboys this way: "Oh, my goodness. Awful. Awful, awful, awful. I don't know; maybe they know something we don't about a lot of their players ... This could easily be the worst team in football."

In keeping with that description, SI prognosticator Josh Elliott pegs Dallas to finish the season at 2-14. Among his peers, Elliott is an optimist; Oates writes, "[T]he depleted Cowboys [have] a solid chance to become the first NFL team to go 0-16." Local sports talk radio personality Mike Rhyner of KTCK ("The Ticket") doesn't bother with hedging at "a chance," and has publicly predicted a winless campaign for the Cowboys.

Is it really that bad? Sure, last year's run defense was the first in NFL history to allow three 200-yard rushing performances in a single year. And yes, Aikman has retired, leaving the offense under the direction of second-round draft choice Quincy Carter, who might not have been the starter at Georgia this season if he had stayed for his senior year.

OK, and both big-name wideouts, Joey Galloway and Raghib "Rocket" Ismael are returning from last year's season-ending injuries. And yes, Emmitt Smith, even on the verge of breaking the all-time NFL career rushing record, is one year older and will be the focus of every defensive coordinator the Cowboys face. Certainly, the entire defensive backfield is a question mark, and ... OK. Maybe it will be pretty bad.

But you know, the Cowboys won their final two pre-season games, and looked solid all the way around in doing it, so ... uh, of course, the last two years the Cowboys ended the preseason with back-to-back victories were 1997 and 1989, when the team finished the regular season at 6-10 and 1-15 (not so) respectively.

At least the special teams, led by punter Micah Knorr, placekicker Tim Seder, and return specialist Wayne McGarity, are solid and sometimes spectacular.

But oh my, Cowboys fans, there is a magic bullet hidden in Coach Campo's holster. Just two weeks ago, the Cowboys anointed Carter the starting quarterback. In doing so, the team decided to release Tony Banks, signed in the offseason to be the team's starter for at least a year or two while Carter "got ready."

So here's the good news: the last team to release Banks was the 2000 Baltimore Ravens -- winners of the 2001 Super Bowl. The last team to release Banks before that was the 1999 St. Louis Rams, who captured the 2000 Super Bowl.

That's right, the last two teams to release Tony Banks won the Super Bowl that same year. So the Cowboys are obviously headed toward a celebration at midfield of the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans on January 27, 2002.

And here's how they'll get there.

Mick Doherty is a writer and editor for American Airlines in Fort Worth, Texas. He covers the Texas Rangers for ESPN.com Fantasy Sports and has been published in numerous other Web venues, including SportingNews.com and previously for About Dallas.