IRVING, Texas - Playoffs. Finally. They return to Texas Stadium, 3:30 p.m. (CST) Sunday. National TV.

Light up the marquees. Turn on the skylights. Nail up the game posters.

Cowboys-Giants.

Can you stand it?

Not since 1998 have the Dallas Cowboys, the team synonymous with NFL playoffs the past 40 years, played a home playoff game. Yeah, it's been that long. Not since 1995 have the Cowboys played an NFC divisional-round playoff game at Texas Stadium, so long ago that two of their guys to play in that game already have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, with a third not far behind.

"I'm more excited than I've ever been in my life," second-year wide receiver Sam Hurd said, about ready to jump out of his skin.

"I see older players coming back, and they know your name," nickel backer Kevin Burnett said. "And people are noticing you walking down the street."

Yes, the buzz is back. So are those calls for tickets. So is the national media, descending upon the place seemingly forgotten since the last time the Cowboys were on the path to a Super Bowl title, back during that 1995 season. This is the way it used to be, and as far as Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is concerned, needs to be.

And qualifying the national significance of this game is the appearance of Miss Azteca - you remember, don't you guys, the beauty queen TV reporter from TV Azteca who stopped down last year's Media Day at the Super Bowl in Miami. They just don't send her anywhere, believe me, and she's been at The Ranch the past two days.

If all this doesn't get the electricity flowing . . . .

Why, just the other day when Jones was asked if he gets nervous the week of a playoff game, and the guy with three Lombardi Trophies in his office acted as if this was his very first day of school, saying, "If you can't get nervous now then go ahead and order the box."

Most of all, though, you are wondering about these Cowboys, who haven't played a meaningful game since Dec. 22, three weeks ago when they secured home-field advantage throughout the playoffs with a 20-13 victory over Carolina on the road. They are more than ready despite all the nonsense you might be reading or listening to for the past week.

They are locked and loaded. Maybe more important, they are energized.

"Everything seems to step up," Burnett said. "Everybody's tone of voice, everybody's intensity in meetings and the claps in the huddles.

"But the biggest thing, by this time last year everybody was worn down, just trying to get through that first playoff game. Now, we're fresh."

Head coach Wade Phillips described Thursday's practice as a "rousing practice."

Better than every bit of this, Terrell Owens was back in practice for the first time since suffering that high left ankle sprain back on Dec. 22. He was running - hard. He was cutting - tight. He was doing everything everyone else was doing during the portion of practice we are allowed to watch.

And he was doing all this without any sort of hitch in his gate. No limping, seemingly no limitations, although let's remember, it's not as if he was being tackled and jostled around out there. These were all premeditated steps, and you don't play football that way, but even so, maybe just his presence got his teammates excited.

Now Phillips and Jones continue to say Owens will be a game-time decision, and Phillips listed his lead receiver as having "limited" practice. He was accused of being "coy" in his press conference, and Phillips basically said maybe he was and maybe he wasn't.

Seems as though Phillips wants a good amount of assurance Owens will last more than one play if he dresses him against the Giants.

But as far as Owens is concerned, there is no concern.

Owens told Deion Sanders during a Thursday afternoon interview for NFL Network, "Oh, I'm going to play . . . I'm going to play."

Deion asked him at what level could he play?

"At a high level," said Owens, seemingly with more confidence than false bravado, and this was before he even went out to practice.

He kept saying he will be able to do "anything." Run deep. Cut hard.

"I'm going to go in and be productive . . . me being on that field is going to be impactful," Owens said.

And when Deion asked, are you still going to give me T.O. when you line up one-on-one on the outside, Owens said, "Oh, I'm going to give it to you, I have no doubt . . . I have no doubt."

Owens went on to detail his rehab regime for NFL Network, saying, "I treat, treat, treat." He talked about his "'round the clock rehab," how he gets his treatment, takes his legal supplements, uses his hyperbaric chamber, utilizes laser treatment, takes advantage of the Dallas Mavericks' underwater treadmill, ice, "everything."

Hurd maintains other than sleeping five or six hours, Owens spends every other waking moment treating his high ankle sprain on the opposite leg from the more serious one he suffered back on Dec. 19, 2004, at Texas Stadium - exactly three years and three days before this one - when Roy Williams dragged him down from behind.

Here's the other thing that may surprise about Owens. He feels a sense of responsibility to his teammates, to the Cowboys and most of all, to Jones, to have himself ready to go for Sunday's all-important playoff game.

"Jerry brought me here to help this team get to the Super Bowl," Owens told Sanders for NFL Network. "He took a chance - a risk, per say in a lot of people's minds - to bring me here. I'm not going to let him down.

"I've come too far. We as a team have come too far."

Owens could have taken that one step further: The Cowboys as an organization have come too far to allow this opportunity - No. 1 seed in the NFC - to slip away.

There are people working for the organization who have no idea what it's like to have a home playoff game. There are people working for the organization who have no idea how the intensity cranks up in the divisional round of the playoffs, just one win away from advancing to the conference championship game.

At one time, playing in such high-profile games was taken for granted. Expected. But those days have long passed. This is a new generation of Cowboys, only Greg Ellis and Flozell Adams having any knowledge of what it's like to play a home playoff game at Texas Stadium. And when it comes to winning one, well, no players are left from that 1996 team which defeated Minnesota in the first round. Why, that's been so long ago two of the players on that team are now on this coaching staff - Jason Garrett and Wade Wilson.

How time flies, and precisely why the Cowboys don't want to squander this opportunity. Next year is not guaranteed.

Jones is all too familiar with that. That's why he went out of his way to hire Bill Parcells in 2003, hoping to end what had been a six-year slide of not having played a "meaningful" playoff game since the 1996 season. And that's, too, why, according to Jones, he got so emotional during the Wade Phillips hiring press conference nearly a year ago.

"It was a little bit of, I just got . . . I just got to get this right," Jones said. "We just got to do this . . . got to make something happen that will get us in position to go compete for a Super Bowl . . . .

"So the answer is, yes (to) is there a lot on the line here, the consequences of not advancing in the playoffs for some reason seem more meaningful. I just told someone today it doesn't seem like I was this drawn up in the early 90's as I am now. Maybe it's because I'm just old."

Or the losing and losing in the playoffs has gotten old.

So let's go. Bring it on. There's not a better time of year.

Sunday can't get here soon enough.