When I first saw the above clipping via The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Peter Mucha, I thought, “this is an awful lot of effort simply to bait Dino Costa”.  As it turns out, Darren Cleveland of Cowboys.com’s ownership group insists his dating service is merely about bringing guys together…as opposed to extracting some kind of ransom from Jerry Jones.

The National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys had a winning bid of $275,000 on the domain name back in 2007, but, according to the news release and a Domain Name News report, a mixup kept the deal from being completed (sort of like some fourth-quarter Tony Romo passes.)

Previously, the site sold western apparel and rustic decorations.

The site basically lay dormant for the last five years before emerging with its current theme.

The ownership group operates thousands of websites with all sorts of themes, and the direction of Cowboys.com grew from research into what people searching for “cowboys” online were looking for.