The Mystique Of The Dallas Cowboys & Their New Stadium

This morning I read a Jerry Jones interview about the recently completed new Dallas Cowboy Stadium in Arlington.

The interviewer repeated the local myth that gets repeated a lot and annoys some people in other parts of America, that being the myth that the Dallas Cowboys are America's Team. Most Americans beg to differ.

The Dallas Cowboys being America's Team really is ridiculous. When it came time to build the Cowboys a new stadium they weren't even Dallas's team, they became Arlington's team.

In the interview one of things Jerry Jones says is the following...

"Where we have invested the money in this stadium for the long term will create more people that can come to the Cowboys than could have ever come normally because of the size of the stadium.  . . . More people will have the experience of what the Cowboys are, our mystique, what we’re about. The Cowboys have been about Dallas in the sense that it represents the idea of Texas, and it represents the idea of larger than life and this image that we want for the stadium, which is one of the future."

This is not a very well-spoken, articulate man. The Dallas Cowboys have some sort of mystique about them? What is this mystique? The Dallas Cowboys represent the idea of Texas? What is the idea of Texas? The new stadium is larger than life?

Well, it is rather large. I'm going to make a prediction about what much of the rest of America will think about "their" team's new stadium. There will be a lot of talk about how out of place the building looks, like it does not belong there. Much will be made of the commercial, industrial and residential blight that is to the south and west of the stadium.

I've never seen a major sports stadium in such a rundown setting. Seattle's new football stadium has the Seattle skyline on the north end and the Mariner's ballpark on the south end, with no blight no matter where you look. Denver's new football stadium, same thing, no blight. Houston's, no blight.

Now, I've really not seen all that many professional football stadiums. Maybe there are others that have been built in a residential neighborhood, using eminent domain to move people off their property, surrounded by pawn shops, boarded up businesses and other blight. I suspect not, though.

It will be interesting to see what America thinks when they see where their team is playing. It ain't gonna be pretty, is my guess.

That's the new Dallas Cowboy stadium in the picture at the top, hovering over a FINA gas station.