The Big 12 has canceled 2020 media day in Arlington. The event was originally scheduled to take place on July 20-21 at AT&T stadium.
According to Chuch Carlton of the Dallas Morning News, the Big 12 has canceled 2020 media day at AT&T Stadium. Originally scheduled to take place on July 20-21, the Big 12 is the first power conference to cancel their football media day due to the coronavirus.
Instead, they will be held virtually for coaches, players, and media. Coaches and athletic directors across the conference supported this idea in their meeting on Wednesday.
“Given the uncertainty around the current environment and how much longer it’s going to last and with attendees having to make travel plans, it didn’t seem prudent for a traditional media day with a mass person gathering,” said Big 12 spokesperson Bob Burda.
Big 12 football media days are the latest cancellation of the coronavirus. Conf. coaches and ADs decide to go virtual at a meeting today. Was scheduled for July 20-21 at AT&T Stadium.
With teams coming from the states of Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, the conference thinks traveling to Arlington wouldn’t be a good idea.
Being the Big 12 first of the Power 5 conferences to cancel their media day, the others could be on their way. As of now, the ACC, Big 10, SEC, and Pac 12 are planning on having their respective media days.
The Moutain West is the only other FBS program to announce a virtual media day. Originally scheduled to be in SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, CA, the conference has not announced a new date yet.
The NFL is set to release a full schedule for 2020, but will move four international games stateside as stadiums consider social distancing.
The 2020 NFL schedule is coming. It will look different than originally anticipated. It may not look as different as fans had feared. But there will be changes, and one team has already offered a virtual glimpse.
Although the NBA, NHL, NASCAR, the PGA, and Major League Baseball have all been forced to dramatically alter their seasons due to the coronavirus pandemic, the National Football League was granted the luxury of waiting the longest to make any sort of decision that would require asterisks in the record books of the future. Reports now indicate that the league will release its 2020 regular season slate of games by May 9. The schedule will be for a full 17-week campaign that starts on time on September 10.
But that doesn’t mean there won’t be some tweaks to the initial plan.
The NFL previously announced the following plans for international games in 2020:
Jaguars: Hosting two London games Cardinals: Hosting a Mexico City game Dolphins: Hosting a game in TBD location Falcons: Hosting a game in TBD location https://t.co/Z7PCz4tf0q
As for the stadiums themselves, at least one is already thinking ahead to the logistics of hosting NFL games under current social distancing guidelines. The Miami Dolphins have released a mocked-up look at how the Plexiglas barriers, floor dots, and altered foot-traffic patterns that have suddenly become commonplace at the local grocery store might work on a much larger scale at Hard Rock Stadium on Sundays this fall.
Are plans being made for “social distancing” at AT&T Stadium for upcoming Cowboys games?
The Miami Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium already have their wheels in motion (H/T @GMA)
— T̷R̷O̷Y̷ ̷H̷U̷G̷H̷E̷S̷ (@TommySledge) May 4, 2020
As per ESPN:
“Hard Rock Stadium became the first public facility to earn the Global Biorisk Advisory Council’s STAR accreditation, the standard used for facilities to implement cleaning, disinfecting and infectious disease prevention work practices to control risks involved with infectious agents like the coronavirus. (The GBAC is a division of the ISSA, a worldwide trade association for the cleaning industry.)”
No official plans or standards from the league have been announced; the Dolphins sought help in crafting their plan early.
“When our fans, players and staff are able to return to Hard Rock Stadium, we want them to have peace of mind that we’re doing everything we can to create the safest and healthiest environment possible,” Dolphins president/CEO Tom Garfinkel said. “We didn’t want to create our own standard, we wanted to be accountable to the most credible third-party standard that exists. Working with the GBAC ensures compliances with critical guidelines for the highest standard of cleanliness and it is our hope that other venues will follow suit as we navigate through these unprecedented times.”
Such a strategy would also necessitate a reduced capacity for fans in attendance. Hard Rock Stadium seats approximately 65,000 fans for a Dolphins game, but may be able to hold just 15,000 or so under these guidelines.
AT&T Stadium’s normal setup for a Cowboys game accommodates 80,000. The same math used in the Miami scenario would equate to a home capacity of under 19,000.
While Dallas could handle the relocation of all 32 teams for an isolated season in a bubble, science says it’s trickier than just geography.
With the NFL Draft just days away and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones suddenly on the president’s task force aiming to bring sports back, the NFL is currently moving forward as if the 2020 season is going to happen. Reports even surfaced this week that the league has been working on contingency plans that include cancelling early-season games or possibly playing in empty stadiums.
There are, of course, literal fortunes that would be lost if the NFL — or any major sports league, for that matter — simply pulled the plug on an entire season outright, so the owners and league executives will undoubtedly look for any alternative they can find to put on some semblance of normality. Anything to fulfill the contractual obligations of playing the games, more or less, as scheduled.
In that almost-no-price-is-too-high vein, a new term has made its way into the conversation. What if the NFL could find itself a bubble city?
The idea is to relocate all 32 teams- players and essential club personnel- to a single city. Sequester them in hotels shown to be virus-free. Ferry them to and from the field for games, where they play in front of network broadcast crews… but no fans. Then keep them isolated in that bubble the rest of the time. Rinse and repeat, for the duration of a whole season.
An extreme way to salvage the season? Certainly. But is it even feasible?
Mike Leslie of WFAA notes thinks it seems at least technically possible. And Dallas – Fort Worth is one of the perhaps few metropolitan areas that could pull it off.
Start with AT&T Stadium, the cornerstone of this plan. JerryWorld could do the heavy lifting by hosting as many as six games in a weekend: Thursday night, two Saturday games (since college football may not play this fall), two Sunday games, and Monday night. With no need to change out the field, no concessions or vendors, and greatly reduced cleaning necessary after each game, it’s logistically do-able, in theory.
But it would by no means be easy.
Leslie’s modest proposal hinges on AT&T Stadium doing double-duty with a doubleheader every Saturday and Sunday. Assume that those kickoffs were spaced out as far as possible- say, the early midday slot and the late primetime slot both days- and it’s still a tight turnaround. Teams’ equipment crews need access to the locker rooms well in advance of the game. And it takes them a long time- even once the players leave- to pack it all up afterward. Then, for this bubble season to work, a separate crew would have to come in and sanitize everything: field, sidelines, locker rooms, press areas, and any other place that’s been touched- all before the next game’s teams can even get off the bus.
Even if the league dramatically shortened the windows of accessibility to the stadium with abbreviated pregame load-ins and hurried postgame load-outs to help facilitate such a doubleheader plan, crews would be cutting it close every time.
If everyone were motivated enough, though, they could make it happen. The home of the Cowboys could indeed serve as the primary field for the NFL’s 2020 campaign.
But there are still as many as ten games left to be played each weekend. Luckily, the Metroplex has no shortage of monster-sized football stadiums that could easily handle network-quality broadcasts. This is Texas, after all.
Leslie calls on TCU’s Carter Stadium, SMU’s Gerald Ford Stadium, the original Cotton Bowl Stadium, McKinney’s ISD Stadium- all outstanding facilities that rival most NFL arenas- to take on two games each per weekend. A Saturday game and a Sunday game at each of those four locations; that’s now fourteen total.
Put another Saturday-Sunday slate in the Cowboys’ five-star indoor facility, Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, and the math works. There are other world-class facilities just in case, like Eagle Stadium at Allen High School and Toyota Stadium in Frisco, even Globe Life Park in Arlington, the former home of MLB’s Rangers, located across the street from AT&T Stadium.
Yes, Dallas could, at least in terms of properly-outfitted gameday facilities, be the NFL’s bubble city.
But don’t ever forget one important thing about bubbles.
They burst. Often without warning. Sometimes at just the slightest nudge.
Staging an NFL season is about far, far more than just finding enough gridirons to host the actual games. Even in empty stadiums, with players locked in their protective bubble with daily COVID testing, there are countless other logistical concerns that would have to be addressed. The key issue with a bubble city isn’t geography; it’s science.
For starters, Apstein writes, “every person who would have access to the facilities will need to be isolated separately for two weeks to ensure that no infection could enter. That’s players and coaches, athletic trainers and interpreters, reporters and broadcasters, plus housekeeping and security personnel. No one can come in or out. Food will have to be delivered. Hotel and stadium employees will have to be paid enough to compensate for their time away from their families. Everyone onsite will have to be tested multiple times during this initial period.”
Ignore for a moment that adequately testing any group of individuals for coronavirus has proven to be easier said than done. The supply simply hasn’t been able to keep up with demand as of yet. Testing every player on every NFL roster multiple times during the initial quarantine- while doctors and nurses and frontline workers and the general public go completely without- just to save the pro football season is a whole different debate.
Because even with all that testing, consider how easily it could fall apart.
“If one person gets [the virus],” Apstein suggests, “he or she will begin spreading it immediately, so everyone will have to continue practicing social distancing. That probably means using a new ball for each play. It probably means seating players in stands rather than on benches or in dugouts. It certainly means banning high-fives.”
But there’s more.
“If a player needs treatment by outside medical personnel, even just for a sprained ankle, he or she has left the secure area and will need to isolate for 14 days before returning to it. And, of course, medical resources need to be abundant enough that society can afford to have ambulances and EMTs on call for games, plus doctors and nurses—clad in currently-scarce protective equipment—who can tend to sports injuries.”
And that’s just for the three hours it takes to play a game. Once the players are driven back to their hotels- in buses whose drivers would also have to agree to be similarly isolated through all of this- there are 165 other hours each week where each and every NFL player would have to live under the kind of microscope that not even Dallas Cowboys are subject to.
“And then once they are back in their rooms,” the SI article continues, “every person involved will have to follow rules. You can’t take your kids to the park. You can’t run to the grocery store. You can’t invite your Bumble match up to your room. These are humans, so the leagues would surely require insurance: That means security personnel (another group that would need to isolate) or invasive cell phone tracking (good luck getting that by the players’ union). If your wife gives birth or your father dies of cancer and you want to be there, that’s another 14-day reentry period.”
Remember, at any point during the entire five months of this laborious, exhausting, and surreal exercise, the whole delicate bubble pops at the slightest disruption.
“What if the person delivering groceries to the biodome walks by someone who coughs on the lettuce and a week later, a player tests positive? Is there an option other than shutting down the whole operation for 14 days?”
Carl Bergstrom, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Washington, offers a blunt answer to Apstein’s hypothetical.
“No,” he says.
“And that’s really the end of the conversation,” Apstein maintains. “Even if we can start this, we almost certainly can’t finish it.”
It’s a fascinating brain game, perhaps, to think about the logistics of housing an entire football season for 32 teams in one city’s stadiums. Thousands upon thousands of tiny details and average-sized what-ifs and gargantuan sacrifices would have to line up just right, though, to even conceive of actually doing it. And it would take the most random thing ever- literally, one person coughing wrong- to butterfly-effect the whole enterprise into a million disastrous pieces. Just so the owners don’t have to give back advertising dollars. Just so football fans still banned from large gatherings in real-life can sit alone in their man caves and pretend to feel normal for three hours on a Sunday in October while Joe Buck and Troy Aikman dissect Xs and Os. Just so the games can be played.
April 11 marks the anniversary of the demolition of Texas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys and the most famous hole in a roof in history.
The skies over the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex were streaked with gray on April 11, 2010. Tens of thousands of football fans tailgated and partied in parking lots surrounding Texas Stadium in Irving. It had become a familiar scene for many a Sunday at the home of the Dallas Cowboys.
But this Sunday at Texas Stadium would be markedly different. For almost four decades, the greatest players in the sport brought the house down with their passing, their running, their catching, their tackling. On this day, however, an 11-year-old boy who had won an essay contest would be the one to bring the house down, with the push of a button and nearly three thousand pounds of dynamite.
It’s been ten years since the iconic Texas Stadium was imploded. The team moved into their swanky new digs at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington in 2009, the previous fall. Their previous home in Irving had long since fallen into disrepair and sat empty in the spring of 2010, save for the 380,000 cubic feet of dirt that had been trucked in, 40 feet deep throughout the building, to safely dampen the planned explosion.
But in true Cowboys fashion, the team squeezed everything they could out of the old place, right up to the end. Seats, star-shaped signs, squares of turf, even the blue painted end zones had all been sold off as memorabilia. Cameras mounted inside the stadium would capture footage of the blast, to later be doled out to TV shows and movies that needed generic footage of a big building going boom. A team of seismologists had been allowed to place technical equipment inside to improve maps of the area’s underground geology.
Former Cowboys players came to say goodbye in person. There was a VIP viewing section. Local television stations broadcast the implosion live. There was a fireworks show before the grand finale. ESPN’s Chris Berman flew in to emcee the festivities.
Heck, the entire demolition was a sponsored event. Kraft Foods paid a hefty promotional fee to call it the “Cheddar Explosion” as part of a marketing gimmick to push macaroni and cheese.
And those thousands of fans who showed up in the pre-dawn hours on a Sunday morning to watch from a long distance as Texas Stadium got blown up? They paid $25 per car for the privilege.
The money went to charity, but still. There may not be a more Dallas Cowboys thing ever.
A place of their own
The Cowboys’ first home was the Cotton Bowl, located on the grounds of the State Fair of Texas. The grand stadium, site of the annual collegiate game of the same name, was already 30 years old when Clint Murchison’s expansion team came into existence. The NFL’s Dallas experiment took off quickly; in their seventh season, the Cowboys hosted Green Bay for the NFL Championship Game on New Year’s Day, 1967.
The Cotton Bowl crowd saw their home team come up short that day, just missing a trip to the first NFL-AFL championship. The team had generated almost 60% of the stadium’s total receipts that year, and within days of that loss to Vince Lombardi’s Packers (who would go on to win what would be retroactively called Super Bowl I), the Cowboys owner unveiled plans for a new futuristic arena that would be unlike anything else in the league.
With a seating capacity of over 75,000, the Cotton Bowl was actually too big for the Cowboys back in those days. The club never sold more than 31,000 season tickets there. Home games rarely sold out, and fans could always count on buying a walk-up ticket on gameday.
This year marks 9️⃣0️⃣ years of events held at Cotton Bowl Stadium. 🙌
Stay tuned throughout 2020 as we highlight 90 of the greatest who have stepped foot in the historic Cotton Bowl.
Murchison knew a smaller stadium would create more demand for seats. But Dallas’s civic leaders were not about to build Murchison a new downtown stadium, not when they deemed the historic Cotton Bowl perfectly usable. So the owner looked outside the city limits, to Irving. Ten miles west of the fairgrounds sat a 90-acre teardrop-shaped plot of land bordered on all sides by freeway. The nondescript highway interchange would become the new home of the Dallas Cowboys… and, in many ways, the sport’s first modern Mecca.
“It will be the finest football stadium to date in the world,” Murchison boasted.
While Murchison’s new stadium would seat fewer fans than the cavernous Cotton Bowl, he intended to go big in other areas, loading up his proposed facility with updates and innovations to ensure that the Cowboys would be the hottest ticket in town. Murchison imagined a venue with a computerized scoreboard that could display messages and animation in lights, aluminum-backed grandstand seats, bigger and plusher locker rooms, more restrooms and drinking fountains and concession stands, new grass, air conditioning, and even a retractable roof that could enclose the stadium entirely when weather was poor. It was, at the time, a radical fantasy akin to flying cars.
A few of Murchison’s notions, though, quickly ushered in a brand new era of unprecedented and exponential profit for team owners.
When plans were announced for the new stadium, Murchison also revealed an initiative to finance the facility through a bond-option system. Season-ticket buyers would be required to purchase up-front bonds of $250, $500, or $1,000, depending on where they wanted to sit, on top of the price of their actual game tickets. The bonds merely secured the rights to buy tickets. It was the birth of the personal seat license, now a common pricing tactic.
Murchison was also the first to make the luxury suite a mainstay of professional sports stadiums. Houston’s Astrodome, which had opened in 1965 and been nicknamed the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” had 53 self-contained skyboxes. The Cowboys’ new stadium would open with an entire upper-ring level of 176 private boxes called Circle Suites.
By June of 1969, the club had sold 16,000 $250 bonds and 60 of the inner-circle boxes at $50,000 apiece. The first home game was still over two years away.
Home sweet home… with a hole in the roof
Construction began in January of 1969, with Murchison, general manager Tex Schramm, coach Tom Landry, quarterback Don Meredith, and the mayor of Irving donning hard hats and turning the first ceremonial shovels. Murchison’s own construction company, the Tecon Corporation, received the nearly $18 million bid to build what would be called Texas Stadium.
By the time the building actually opened in 1971, the seating capacity had increased from 55,000 to 65,000, thanks to increased fan interest. And many of those fans ready to start taking in live games were of a decidedly different ilk than the Cotton Bowl’s clientele, thanks to the team’s marketing and selling of those Circle Suites.
Each suite had two rows of comfortable seating, three TVs with instant replay capability, and a wet bar. Occupants were allowed- no, encouraged- to decorate their suites according to their own personal tastes, and each suite seemed to be more opulent than the one next door. Marble floors. Animal print rugs. French antique furniture. Crystal chandeliers. For better or worse, pro football in Dallas soon became a high-society gala every single Sunday. And the venue’s new “business class” fans enjoyed a vantage point that was far removed from the blood and guts being spilled on the field below.
Players of the time likened Texas Stadium to the Roman Colosseum. Meredith, one of those early gladiators, noted the extreme juxtaposition inside the arena, which “some people describe as the finest facility in football and others call a vulgar display of wealth,” he said.
Some of the stadium’s other quirks rubbed players the wrong way in a more literal sense. The artificial playing surface, called Tartan Turf, was notoriously hard and slick. And razor-sharp.
“I don’t know what kind of turf it was,” running back Walt Garrison once joked, “but if you slid, it cut the hell out of you. It was harder than Chinese arithmetic.”
Like most fields, the one Murchison had constructed wasn’t perfectly flat, to aid in drainage. But the midfield crown was so steep that players on one sideline could barely see their opponents on the other side. One opposing team’s kicker said, “When you’re kicking, you’re uphill one way and downhill the other… There’s nothing good about it.”
But for all the (mostly) no-expense spared accommodations, Texas Stadium’s most notable feature was always the two and a half acre hole smack in the middle of the roof.
View from inside Texas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys from 1971-2008.
Murchison abandoned plans to enclose and air-condition the entire stadium early on. Some say the full dome with retractable roof that he wanted proved to be too heavy for the structure to support. Other suggest the technology to build it was simply cost-prohibitive. The partial roof Murchison settled on covered all the stands, sheltering and shading spectators, but left the playing surface exposed to the elements.
The partial roof wreaked havoc with shadows across the playing surface. Thanks to the orientation of the field, one sideline was blasted by the full brunt of the Texas afternoon sun while the other- the one the Cowboys occupied- was comfortably shaded. The harsh contrast between bright light and pitch dark drove TV camera crews crazy. Fans could tell instantly upon tuning in if the Cowboys were playing at home, thanks to the Texas-sized open-air skylight overhead.
It was an architectural feature that would forever define Texas Stadium. Detractors dubbed the only-partly-enclosed stadium “The Half-Astrodome.” But the legendary explanation often attributed to Dallas linebacker D.D. Lewis was the one that stuck for Cowboys fans. The hole in the roof, Lewis supposedly claimed, was so that could watch His favorite team play.
Best of times, worst of times
For the next 38 seasons, The Almighty got a mighty spectacular show, as a host of football memories (some magnificent, some painful) played out under the famous hole in the roof.
The first game at Texas Stadium ended in a 44-21 Cowboys win over New England in Week 6 of the 1971 season. Running back Duane Thomas scored the first points in the new place, a 56-yard touchdown run just two minutes after the opening kick on October 24, 1971.
The Cowboys won the first postseason game ever played at Texas Stadium in the venue’s inaugural year. With a 14-3 win over the 49ers here, Dallas won their second straight NFC title; they would claim their first Super Bowl two weeks later.
Clint Longley, a backup quarterback nicknamed “The Mad Bomber” (for his habit of bouncing passes off Coach Landry’s coaching tower in training camp) became the hero of the 1974 Thanksgiving Day game here. Coming on in relief of a concussed Roger Staubach, Longley chucked a 50-yard scoring pass to Drew Pearson with 35 seconds left to beat Washington.
Defensive end Bob Lilly, the first draft pick in team history, was the first Cowboy inducted into the stadium’s Ring of Honor here in 1975, his name installed permanently in large lettering on the stadium walls. Devised by Tex Schramm, the Ring of Honor was a novel way to honor iconic players without retiring their uniform number. It remains the greatest honor for a Dallas Cowboy, with just 22 men enshrined. The concept has since been copied by several other teams around the league.
Staubach’s final win came here, a fourth-quarter comeback- naturally- in which he threw two touchdown passes in the final four minutes to beat Washington in the 1979 season finale. Staubach called it “absolutely the most thrilling sixty minutes I ever spent on a football field.”
Today in 1979, Roger Staubach played his last regular season game with the Cowboys.
After trailing Washington 34-21 with 3 minutes left in game, “Captain America” led the Dallas comeback & won the game 35-34 to win the NFC East & knock the Redskins out of the playoffs. pic.twitter.com/NVzYtgsQ1c
Cowboys kicker Luis Zendejas suffered a brutal hit here in 1989, allegedly at the direction of Eagles coach Buddy Ryan. Ryan had reportedly offered a cash reward for any Philadelphia player who knocked Zendejas or Troy Aikman out of the game that later became known as The Bounty Bowl.
Landry returned here in 1993 when he was inducted in the Ring of Honor. It was the coach’s first time back in the stadium since being fired after the 1988 season. He pushed for Murchison and Schramm to be inducted alongside him, but was denied. Landry would only set foot inside the building one more time before his passing in 2000.
Leon Lett muffed a blocked Dolphins field goal here in the waning moments of 1993’s Thanksgiving Day loss, a game where a freak winter storm had blanketed the Texas Stadium turf in snow.
Jason Garrett had his “fairy tale” moment here as a third-string quarterback on Thanksgiving Day 1994. With Troy Aikman and Rodney Peete sidelined by injury, Garrett got the start against Brett Favre and Green Bay. His first pass was intercepted. But in the second half, Garrett led the Cowboys to five straight touchdown drives.
Terrell Owens disrespected the midfield star here as a member of the San Francisco 49ers in 2000. Cowboys safety George Teague retaliated by leveling the wide receiver as Owens posed for TV cameras in a post-touchdown celebration.
Emmitt Smith broke Walter Payton’s all-time rushing record here in 2002. His 11-yard rumble in the fourth quarter of a loss to Seattle was the culmination of a personal goal he had written down for himself even before being drafted by Dallas in 1990.
IRVING, TX – OCTOBER 27: Running back Emmitt Smith celebrates after breaking the all time NFL rushing record against the Seattle Seahawks at Texas Stadium on October 27, 2002 in Irving, Texas. The Seahawks defeated the Cowboys 17-14. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
Aikman, Smith, and Michael Irvin entered the Ring of Honor together here in 2005. But the Triplets couldn’t help Bill Parcells’s squad preserve a shutout over Washington; two shocking touchdown catches by Santana Moss in the last four minutes gave the Redskins their first win at Texas Stadium in a decade.
An undrafted free agent named Tony Romo made his NFL debut here on a Monday night in 2006. After Drew Bledsoe tossed an interception just before halftime, Parcells made a switch at quarterback. Romo’s first pass was picked off and Dallas lost the game, but Romo kept the starting job, winning six of his ten starts that season.
The Baltimore Ravens ruined the stadium’s going-away party here on December 20, 2008. In the final game played at Texas Stadium, a Romo-led rally fell short when the Cowboys defense gave up an 82-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter. The last touchdown in the stadium was also the longest scoring run Dallas had ever allowed in the building.
From 1971 through the farewell season of 2008, the Cowboys played 313 regular-season and playoff games at Texas Stadium. They went 213-100 overall, an impressive .681 winning percentage.
More than a game
Although Texas Stadium was built to be the home of the Cowboys, it served other purposes, too. High school and college teams from around the state got plenty of use out of the venue over the years; SMU called the arena home from 1979 through 1986. The NFL even staged the 1973 Pro Bowl there.
But the building housed more than football games. Large crowds were drawn to Texas Stadium for other sporting events as well, including soccer, bull riding, lacrosse, and professional wrestling.
The very first event at the facility, in fact, was a good old-fashioned church revival. The Greater Southwest Billy Graham Crusade served as a ten-day christening of the stadium in September 1971, with Johnny and June Cash, former president Lyndon Johnson, and Coach Landry all in attendance. Over 450,000 people came.
The lots around the stadium were used occasionally as a drive-in movie theater during the offseason.
Texas Stadium made cameo appearances in many film and television productions. Walker, Texas Ranger shot scenes at the stadium frequently. Eagle-eyed viewers will also spot the building in the TV series Friday Night Lights and the 1999 feature film Any Given Sunday. Most famously, the stadium appeared in the opening credits of the primetime soap opera Dallas for its entire thirteen-season run on CBS.
Several major musical acts played Texas Stadium over its lifespan. The Jacksons, Madonna, Guns N’ Roses, Dave Matthews Band, Shania Twain, and Metallica all played the arena. When Garth Brooks came to Texas Stadium for a 1993 NBC special, special rigging had to be installed over the iconic hole in the roof so that Brooks could perform a stunt where he “flies” over the audience while suspended by a trapeze harness.
Many of those non-traditional events hosted at the stadium in later years came during the ownership of Jerry Jones, who used the place in ways that the previous caretakers could never have imagined. Murchison may have built Texas Stadium with the future in mind, but Jones was intent on actually taking it there.
New ownership, new plans
Jerry Jones had started talking about plans to give Texas Stadium a massive facelift as early as 1994, during the team’s remarkable Super Bowl stretch. Barry Switzer had led the team to another championship as Cowboys coach, and Jones was suddenly eager to take the club’s home stadium to the next level as well. The facility had gotten old, and it no longer seemed a fitting home to the best team in football.
When Jones bought the Cowboys and the Texas Stadium lease in 1989, both were in need of an overhaul. On the night he agreed to the deal, Jones reportedly went to the stadium and lay down on the 50-yard-line. Staring up through the hole in the roof, he started formulating a plan to bring both the team and the stadium back to glory.
It took four seasons to take the team from worst to first. The building they played in would prove to be a much harder task.
Jones envisioned an entertainment-and-office complex surrounding the stadium, to which he would add expanded seating to accommodate 100,000-plus and even finally install a retractable roof over the signature hole. The ultimate hope was for Dallas to host a Super Bowl of its own; this $350 million renovation would make it happen.
IRVING, UNITED STATES: Dallas Cowboy wide receiver Michael Irvin (C) announces his retirement from football at Texas Stadium 11 July 2000 in Irving, Texas. Irvin will join Fox Sports Net as a football analyst. Flanking Irvin is Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones (L) and head coach Dave Campo (R). AFP PHOTO/Paul BUCK (Photo credit should read PAUL BUCK/AFP via Getty Images)
But changes to Texas Stadium had started almost immediately after Jones purchased the team and facility back in 1989. Vacant luxury boxes were leased, turning a quick $18 million profit. Corporate advertising appeared around the venue for the first time, something Schramm had considered “beneath” the franchise. Jones signed separate sponsorships for the stadium (rather than the team) to avoid having to share that revenue with other clubs. Personal-seat license fees went up. Complimentary season tickets given out to former players, staff, and friends were taken back for resale. Jones persuaded the city council to allow beer and wine sales for the first time. He put up a giant party tent outside the stadium and charged admission to “The Corral” on gameday.
Jones had spent a small fortune on the team. Now he was intent on making a small fortune from their home stadium, in order to spruce it up.
But by 2003, it was clear that those upgrades wouldn’t happen. The no-man’s-land around the stadium had never been developed, and the decision-makers in Irving were unwilling to fund Jones’s pie-in-the-sky ideas. In fact, a study requested by the city council had shown that the Cowboys brought in just $51 million a year in economic benefits to Irving. When fans came to the games, they spent most of their money at the stadium itself or outside the city limits. The Cowboys may have been a crown jewel for Irving, but they weren’t a cash cow. And they certainly weren’t worth an up-front investment of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Jones would look elsewhere to build his palace. Texas Stadium’s days were officially numbered.
Demolition day
And so it came to be that on April 11, 2010, 11-year-old Casey Rogers from the nearby town of Terrell, wearing an oversized hardhat, had his finger poised over the button that would detonate over a ton of explosives and reduce one of professional football’s most iconic structures to rubble.
After the obligatory countdown, the moment arrived with a flashes of bright light from inside the stadium, accompanied by a series of percussive echoes. The ground started to shake, and as a cloud of smoke blossomed out from around the structure, Texas Stadium fell in a carefully choreographed sequence. It took less than 30 seconds from start to finish.
“Awesome!” young Rogers exclaimed. “It was better than I thought it would be.”
IRVING, TX – APRIL 11: Texas Stadium, the former home of the Dallas Cowboys is imploded on April 11, 2010 in Irving, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
But it was a surprisingly dramatic moment for some who had come to view Texas Stadium as more than just a local sports arena.
“It was much more emotional than I expected,” said Pam Seal, a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader who had come from Mesquite to bid a final farewell. “I’m so glad that I had my family out there to hold my hand through it. I didn’t think I would be that much of a basket case about it. It was like saying goodbye to an old friend.”
Once the dust from the explosion cleared, a striking image was left: three buttressing pillars were left standing in the debris. In place of the stadium where the legendary Triplets had risen to the top of the football world, only a trio of girders were now left to mark the spot where it had happened.
Today, the oddly-shaped parcel of land bordered by Highway 183 to the south, Loop 12 to the west, and John W. Carpenter Freeway to the east is called the “Diamond Interchange Property.” Over the years, developers have toyed with the idea of building something on the footprint of the old stadium, but nothing has come to fruition. The Texas Department of Transportation uses it now as a staging area for equipment.
Cowboys Stadium became AT&T Stadium in 2013 after a naming rights deal was struck with the telecommunications giant. With its massive video board, art galleries, gleaming architecture, gathering areas for fans, huge seating capacity, and field-level luxury boxes, it is in many regards the next-gen venue Jones had wanted to turn Texas Stadium into.
And the retractable roof that an eager Clint Murchison Jr. had wanted to put over the top of Texas Stadium? The Cowboys finally built one, and they’re now practically standard at new stadiums around the southern portion of the country. It’s been noted by many that when Jones opens the roof at AT&T Stadium, his new palace looks just a bit like old Texas Stadium.
Call it a tip of the ten-gallon hat, perhaps, to one of the great stadiums in American sports history, and an integral piece of Dallas Cowboys history.
“Texas Stadium will never become tarnished, neglected, or dishonored, but always remembered, revered, and respected, a memory that will be cherished, a place forever honored by all of us who were there,” said Alicia Landry, the coach’s widow, during that demolition weekend ten years ago. “It was a special time and a special place, for the team and for the fans, to be a part of our memories forever.”
Errol Spence Jr. said that a showdown with Terence Crawford will take place when the money makes sense.
Errol Spence Jr. appeared on the “Time Out with Ray Flores” show Instagram Live Monday and, naturally, Terence Crawford came up.
That’s the fight – Spence vs. Crawford – that boxing fans have been dying to see but are still waiting, at least in part due to the rival companies with which Spence (Premier Boxing Champions) and Crawford (Top Rank) are affiliated.
Still, Spence reiterated that the fight will happen.
“It’s big,” he said. “I mean, it just has to make sense [financially], just like [Manny] Pacquiao and Floyd [Mayweather]. A lot of money in the pot, everyone gets their fair share. As long as it makes sense moneywise … I think it’ll happen.”
He went on: “They have to pay us what we’re worth. I mean, Terence and I are going to get in there and try to kill each other. You have to be paid what you’re worth.”
When will it happen?
“I talked to Al [Haymon of PBC],” Spence said. “… He said the same thing: When it makes sense it’s going to happen. Hopefully it’ll happen next year. I’m looking forward to fighting Terence Crawford.”
Another name came up as a possible opponent: Pacquiao, who is coming off a sensational victory over Keith Thurman.
Spence also likes the idea of facing the Filipino icon. And the Dallas resident knows exactly where he wants it to happen – AT&T Stadium, where the Cowboys play and where the fight between Spence and Mikey Garcia in March of last year drew almost 50,000 spectators.
“Me and Pacquiao would probably do 100,000 in a fight at AT&T Stadium. Pacquiao would be the perfect opponent [there],” Spence said.
Spence, a big welterweight, figures to grow out of the division at some point but he’s determined to stick around for a while.
How long will he stay?
“Until I finish my goal of becoming undisputed welterweight champion,” he said. “When I become undisputed champion, I’ll definitely move up. Until then, I’m going to stay at 147. I don’t care if I have to cut a leg off.”
Hopefully, that means we’ll see Spence vs. Crawford and the other top 147-pounders soon.
The Penn State Nittany Lions are in Dallas where they will face the Memphis Tigers in the Cotton Bowl on Saturday.
The game will be played at the home of the Dallas Cowboys in “The House that Jerry Built.” As you know, the stadium as a massive Jumbotron/video screen that hangs over most of the field.
The screen has only been hit a few times during real games but on Wednesday it got hit a number of times as Penn State placekicker Jordan Stout kicked three balls in a row into the screen. He did apologize for it, which was nice.
The Buffalo Bills won big on Thanksgiving, landing their first “statement win”, against the Dallas Cowboys with the world watching. Buffalo, for the last 20 years, has been a team that collapsed when the national spotlight was placed on them, but …
The Buffalo Bills won big on Thanksgiving, landing their first “statement win”, against the Dallas Cowboys with the world watching. Buffalo, for the last 20 years, has been a team that collapsed when the national spotlight was placed on them, but this was different.
The Bills delivered in a big way, and embarrassing the Cowboys, in their home stadium, and in a game that they have played in every year, since the 1960’s. I’ll admit, that it was strange to watch the Bills in a scenario like this, and a player in a Bills jersey eating a turkey leg to close out the game.
The offense fired on all cylinders, with Josh Allen moving the ball efficiently, by air, connecting with Cole Beasley, who was out for revenge against his former team. Devin Singletary caught a touchdown pass himself, as well as dominating on the ground. Allen looked like the franchise quarterback that Buffalo has long awaited, for the first time. It was certainly a defining game.
The Bills defense handled itself well. Giving up touchdowns to Dallas on their first and last possessions only, they did well, disrupting the number one ranked offense in the NFL. Dak Prescott, in an important contract situation this season, turned the ball over several times. He had defenders in his face all night, and even Ezekiel Elliott couldn’t get anything going.
Buffalo looked good when the lights shined bright, but what lays in front of them is another challenge, in the form of the red hot Baltimore Ravens. It’s hard to not try and enjoy this win against Dallas on a special occasion. With 10 days to prepare for the offensive onslaught that Lamar Jackson has brought against the best of the NFL, there is a lot more work that has to be done before the real celebrating can commence.
Billswire Podcast host Matt Johnson explores the win and outlook towards Baltimore in Week 13:
Sep 15, 2019; Landover, MD, USA; Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Michael Gallup (13) runs after a catch against the Washington Redskins during the second half at FedExField. Mandatory Credit: Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports For the first time since 1996, …
Sep 15, 2019; Landover, MD, USA; Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Michael Gallup (13) runs after a catch against the Washington Redskins during the second half at FedExField. Mandatory Credit: Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports
For the first time since 1996, the Buffalo Bills are 8-3, and for the first time since 1994, they are playing football on Thanksgiving. Dallas has been a regular host of the Thanksgiving Day series since 1966, and the Cowboys have a rich history against the Buffalo Bills. It is one of the most anticipated games of Thanksgiving this year.
Here is everything that you need to know about the history of the Cowboys and Buffalo Bills, including their respective Thanksgiving Day stats:
The Bills and Cowboys first met on September 17, 1971, in Buffalo. The Cowboys won that game 49-37.
They met in two Superbowls, 27 and 28, with Dallas winning both encounters.
Their most recent encounter took place on December 27, 2015, and the Bills won that encounter 16 – 6.
The Cowboys lead the all-time series, including the two Super Bowl games, 8 games to 4 and have outscored Buffalo 280-181 over those 12 encounters.
The Cowboys played their first Thanksgiving Day game on November 24, 1966, defeating the Cleveland Browns 26-14.
Dallas would hold that tradition annually, with the exception of 1975 and 1977, in an effort to help out the St. Louis (Arizona) Cardinals boost stadium ticket sales.
Dallas is 31-18-1 on Thanksgiving.
Buffalo started playing Thanksgiving Day games while in the AFL. They played their first against the New York Titans (Jets) in a 21-14 loss.
The modern iteration of the Buffalo Bills have never hosted a Thanksgiving Day game, but played in five during their AFL years when no team had that home game guaranteed.
The Bills are 3-4-1 on Thanksgiving.
2019 So Far
Coming off of a 10-6 season and winning the NFC East for the second time in three years, the Cowboys are having a interesting year to say the least. Dallas lost in the Divisional Round of the playoffs to the Los Angeles Rams, and there were very high expectations coming into this season.
The Cowboys are currently 6-5, narrowly sitting atop the NFC East with Philadelphia only one game back at 5-6. As close as the race for the NFC East has been, both Philadelphia and Dallas are not being viewed as very competitive amongst the entire NFL, and are currently the worst team by record in the NFC Playoffs. A rather disappointing year that has many of the Dallas fan base calling for Jason Garrett’s removal as head coach, again.
2019 has been rocky from the start, as star running back Ezekiel Elliott held out for a bigger contract, a few years short of the expiration of his rookie deal. Considering the workload that has been put on “Zeke” over his very young NFL career, it was relatively fair, considering the toll that running back’s endure. However, the hold out led to some awkward moments and uncomfortable statements between Owner Jerry Jones and Elliott.
Also, a looming question heading into 2019 was quarterback Dak Prescott’s contract situation. Prescott has played relatively well in his tenure, sporting a 38-21 record as a starter with 14,309 yards passing, 88 touchdowns and 35 interceptions. He will most likely be extended with Dallas, as he’s given stability at his position that the Cowboys didn’t have during the latter years of Tony Romo’s career. Whether or not Dak has performed well in clutch moments, has been the question of his biggest detractors, and that is an area that he has lacked in.
Dallas began the season with three straight wins, defeating the New York Giants, Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins. A great start, and Dallas looked like a top tier team and a definite Super Bowl contender, granted the strength of schedule. Prescott was having some of his best numbers, and the team, as a unit, was a well oiled machine.
However, it was the three games after that win streak that gave the Cowboys a stigma for 2019 that they “couldn’t beat good teams”. Losing to the New Orleans Saints 10-12, Green Bay Packers 24-34, and even a massive upset by the New York Jets, left Dallas feeling like an average team that couldn’t compete against the class of the division.
Since then, they’ve defeated the Eagles 37-10, completed the sweep of the Giants by winning 37-18, lost to the Minnesota Vikings 24-28, beat Detroit 35-27 and fell to the New England Patriots 9-13.
Dallas currently ranks first in “Team Offense” earning 4,767 yards over their first 11 games. They are the number one passing offense as well, with 3,339 passing yards. They are the eighth ranked rushing offense with 1,428 rushing yards, nearly 1,000 yards behind the Baltimore Ravens who sit at first.
Dak is currently the number one passer in the NFL, with 3,433 yards passing, tied at fourth in passing touchdowns with Kirk Cousins at 21 and tied for fifth in interceptions at 10 with Jimmy Garoppolo, Matt Ryan, Sam Darnold and Ryan Fitzpatrick.
“Zeke” is ranked seventh in rushing with 919 yards on the ground and tied at seven rushing touchdowns with Nick Chubb, Josh Jacobs, Todd Gurley and Bills QB Josh Allen. Dak Prescott has 197 rushing yards to his credit, good enough for 60th in the NFL, as well as three rushing touchdowns of his own.
Amari Cooper comes in at sixth in receiving, amassing 886 yards and he’s tied for fifth with touchdown receptions, at seven. Michael Gallup is the next best receiver, sitting at 21st in the NFL with 733 receiving yards. Randall Cobb at 39th with 581 yards.
As a defense, Dallas sits sixth in the NFL, allowing 3,503 yards against them and the seventh most points scored against them at 210. They are sixth in passing defense, giving up 2,350 yards by air and 12 touchdowns. The weakest aspect of their defense is against the rush, with 1,153 yards ran against them, good enough for 15th in the NFL.
How they match up with Buffalo?
There is certainly some intrigue with this game. Both Dallas and Buffalo are teams with stigmas. They can beat who they are supposed to beat, but can’t get the job done against winning teams. It rings true, as Dallas has not yet defeated a team with a winning record as of Week 13. The only team that Buffalo has defeated with a winning record currently, is the Tennessee Titans.
The Bills rush defense is at great risk this week, although it has improved the last few weeks. Ezekiel Elliott is one of the best running backs in the game, and an excellent pass-catching back. We all watched the defense that New England brought forth on Dallas last week, limiting the best passing offense to no touchdowns. The Bills have a tough defense as well, and it will be interesting to see if the Bills can duplicate or come close to New England’s performance.
Offensively, the Bills moved the ball effectively against Denver, who is ranked in the Top 10. Smart, calculated football to keep moving the chains with more usage for Singletary and Gore. The Cowboys weak rush defense should be a target for Buffalo in this game. Also, Cole Beasley is making his big return to the team where he had spent many years at. Beasley was excellent in the short to mid-range passing game last week, and it would be a good idea to continue to build off of that.
The Cowboys obviously have home field advantage on their side, and that typically bodes well with teams on short weeks. Traveling teams are 5-7 on the year, which aren’t terrible odds for the Bills.
Enjoy this game, and the other two throughout the day, with family and friends, the best way to enjoy football. Happy Thanksgiving from myself and the rest of the Billswire staff to you and yours!
