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They never stopped inventing reasons to hate the Cowboys in the nation’s capital. The Cowboys were only three years old when Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
“I think the fact he got killed in Dallas, it was almost like it was our fault,” a former Cowboy named Dan Reeves recalled over the phone. “People didn’t like the Cowboys because we were from that town.”
When the Cowboys and Redskins collide tonight for the NFC East crown, it will seem like old times for those who vividly remember the most hateful NFL rivalry of yesteryear. A rivalry that was taken to a vengeful level when Redskins owner Edward Bennett Williams hired George Allen in 1971. “The future is now,” Allen announced.
He wasn’t kidding.
“George Allen kind of instilled in us this us-against-the-Cowboys mentality,” former Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann said over the phone. “He was such a passionate man. He was left-handed — he’d always get that left arm going: ‘They want to be in their shiny uniforms. We want to turn this into a streetfight. We want to bloody ’em.’ ”
If Tom Landry was Ice, then Allen was Fire and Brimstone.
“I remember George came into the Dallas week, and he said he just wished he could meet Tom Landry on the 50-yard line, just him and Tom and they could fight it out,” former Cowboys and Redskins running back Calvin Hill once said. “He started talking about what he’d do to Tom. This was during the week, a speech to the team. He was saying all this that he’d do to Tom, blah blah blah.
“Then he dismissed the meeting. I remember I was walking down the stairs, and [Redskins running back] Larry Brown said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘You know, Tom Landry’s in pretty good shape.’ ”
Prior to Allen’s arrival, Landry was more concerned with the Giants, for whom he was an assistant coach along with Vince Lombardi.
“He always used to say, ‘You can never be a great team until you played well in New York,’ ” Reeves said.
Landry was so certain Allen was spying on the Cowboys’ old Forest Lane practice facility from a nearby hotel that he would rent out the top floors of the hotel the two weeks before the Redskins games.
“Any helicopter that came over, the coaches would look up and say ‘Damn, that’s George Allen up there with a notebook,’ ” Cowboys fullback Walt Garrison once said.
Allen had cracked the Cowboys’ robotic, corporate establishment façade.
“He was basically a crook,” the Cowboys’ Mel Renfro said once. “The Richard Nixon of football.’’
Allen was not exactly president of the Roger Staubach Fan Club.
“He used to say, ‘If we can injure Staubach, we have a chance to win,’ ” former Cowboy Lee Roy Jordan once said.
When Bountygate surfaced, ex-Redskins offensive lineman George Starke recalled during a radio interview that Allen put up $200 for the player who could knock Staubach out of a game.
“The only time that George actually ever put a bounty on Roger Staubach happened to have been in the Thanksgiving game that [backup quarterback] Clint Longley came in and beat us,” Starke said.
The year was 1974. Longley, a.k.a. the Mad Bomber, threw a pair of touchdown bombs, including a 50-yarder to Drew Pearson with 28 seconds remaining, to lead a stunning comeback.
“I can still see George over there after Staubach got knocked out,” Landry once said. “Boy, he was spitting on his hands, rubbing them. He knew he had the ballgame won. Then Longley comes in and throws that pass for a touchdown. I don’t think George got over that. I know he didn’t. He brought it up every time we met. It was really a pleasure to see that happen.”
Bruce Allen, George’s son, is now the Redskins general manager.
“Thanksgiving is ruined forever for that,” he once said. “I never even liked turkey sandwiches after that.”
Cowboys-Redskins was Sonny Jurgensen vs. Don Meredith. “We had some shootouts,” Reeves said.
Cowboys-Redskins was Harvey Martin tossing a funeral wreath into the Redskins locker room after a 35-34 Cowboys win that clinched the 1979 NFC East title on the final day of the season.
Cowboys-Redskins was Dexter Manley knocking out Danny White in the 1982 NFC Championship Game.
Cowboys-Redskins was Theismann throwing four interceptions in a 44-14 loss in 1985 on his 36th birthday in his last game at Texas Stadium. With some five minutes remaining, Theismann told Joe Gibbs he would come out only after he scored, which he did.
“That was the night Dallas Cowboy fans sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me as I sat there on the bench at the end of the game,” Theismann said.
Cowboys-Redskins again tonight.
steve.serby@nypost.com