Cowboys Stadium

It’s not easy to find things Dallas did right in preparing for the Super Bowl.
An ESPN commentator said he didn’t think it was possible to find a worse host city than Jacksonville, but they did.
And the Australian press wrote scathing commentary about Dallas asking, “How’s a married man on a ‘business trip’ to the Super Bowl supposed to flaunt his trophy girlfriend — be she rented or otherwise — when she’s being forced to wear so many clothes?”
Today we learn that Jerry Jones sold 3,500 tickets for nonexistent seats, not the 1,200 as reported earlier. The NFL said they’re offering these fans tickets to next year’s game, although not the airfare to get there or cost of extra hotel nights.
Stupid things were planned like a series of outdoor concerts in February, including one that pandered to the lowest stereotypes and was marketed unsuccessfully to the LGBT community. Seriously. Has anyone ever gone to an outdoor concert in Dallas in February?

And who could have predicted that ice would fall off of a domed roof? TV news reports suggested that heat from inside the stadium might have caused snow on the roof to melt. Ya think?
However, the most successful Super Bowl-related party was put on by the Cedar Springs Merchants Association. They combined outdoor street party with plenty of indoor venues. Thousands attended.
Interesting that the NFL-Super Bowl host committee didn’t sanction the party and didn’t allow them to use the Super Bowl name. So congratulations to the CSMA for throwing the best Super Bowl party despite the Dallas host committee. The LGBT community is responsible for this, not Dallas or the host committee. We’re not accusing them of homophobia, just stupidity for not knowing that Cedar Springs is a Dallas asset.
But here’s one thing Dallas, or really Jerry Jones, did right: He never did name his stadium.
A front page story in the New York Times today complains about the name of the new Shea Stadium. The replacement is named after one of that city’s financial institutions that almost collapsed and received the largest federal bank bailout. And why is this suddenly an issue today? Because this week, the owners of the Mets are tied to making profits off of Bernie Madoff and are being sued for $1 billion.
Naming a stadium or venue can be tricky. In Houston, Enron Field has been renamed, but who can bother to keep up with all the new names? And if you don’t like the Astros, it’s much more delicious to call their park by the name of its original corporate criminal benefactor.
In Dallas, American Airlines Center stuck because it’s the only name the place ever had. Well, for a few weeks it was referred to as Victory Arena, but the AA name is all anyone’s ever really used.
However, in Fair Park, Starplex has been renamed so many times, most recently with a long, dopey dotcom name. I liked the year it was named after a brand of vodka. Seriously.
In Grand Prairie, their 6,000 seat arena-theater went from being named after a phone to a phone company. Or vice versa. One is the actual brand I have but the other is not my carrier. Either way, I don’t remember or care which one is the current name.
And the worst was the couple of years The Ballpark in Arlington was renamed Ameri-something field. It wasn’t Ameriprise, the mutual fund company, and it wasn’t American anything, but I can’t really remember the company that bought the naming rights. Funniest part of that story was when KRLD, which used to have its studio in The Ballpark, refused to give the company free advertising by using the name every time they did a station ID — and got evicted.
But Jerry and Company did it right. Some commentators referred to the stadium as The Death Star. But most simply called it Cowboy’s Stadium. It’s simple. It’s direct. It’s what it is.