FanPost

Thoughts on Jerry World


I went to see Paul McCartney in concert last week at the new Cowboys Stadium.

I live in Houston and I hate them cowboys - because I was trained to hate them
during my formative years growing up in Philly.

My friend in Dallas said everyone there laughs at Jerry Jones' attempt to sell the
naming rights to the stadium for more than it cost to construct the place.

Unofficially, everyone I know calls the place "Jerry World".

I partly went to the McCartney concert just to get a peek a the stadium.

The television IS impressive in a wierd sort of way. It's an incredibly clear
picture and it is incredibly large. I don't doubt that its the largest in the world
(until some other place gets built).

To my surprise, the roof looks exactly like the old Cowboys stadium -right
down to the "Garth Brooks beams" that were added in the 90s. The main
difference is they have to open the roof this time to let God watch his Eagles
beat up on them Cowboys.

During the concert, I mentioned to my son that the television was WAY too low
to allow an NFL punter to perform his duties. So it was with great pleasure
that I watched the Titans/Cowboys game last Friday....

I strongly suspect the current height was established to put the television right
in line with Jerry's owners box. The rest of the game be damned.

There is plenty of room for it to be raised - and I presume that will happen
fairly quickly since it needs to be raised to accomodate a U2 concert in
October. The only real question is does Jerry elect to pay for a permanent
height or install something that allows the TV to go up and down at will.

The monster is approximately 5 stories high. I watched technicans actually
get hoisted inside the thing to run the tv before the concert. It wasn't used
much at the conert. Just an impressive slide show of photos detailing the
stadiums construction - and a brief little movie during Paul's encore.

It's actually so big that its a major distraction. I fully expect most Cowboys
fans to not be able to concentrate on the live game. My son thought every
one of the players on the sideline were staring up at the screen during
the game. It's just human nature. The blasted thing is THAT big.

Other comments about the stadium...

1.) The actual seats are a joke. We sat on the side in the 200 level
(section 229). I would have had a great view of a football game - but
Jerry must have told them to make the seats extra skinny to sell more
tickets... and my son thought the plastic was very cheap and likely
to need replacement in about one years time. If any Eagles fans are
going to the game this year on Jan 3rd, I'd be real careful about
spending too much money on a very uncomfortable seat. That
being said - I do think the $29 standing room only "party zone" seats
are attractive. And that's what I plan to buy when I go to the game
to watch the Eagles spank the Cowboys as badly as they did last
December 28th.

2.) There is a very odd ring of private boxes that are BELOW the
playing field. My son kept saying "what are those for? for fans
to look at the rear ends of the players???" I kept wondering if
they were actually boxes or if they just appeared to be boxes. Nope.
Jerry assumes that all paying customers in boxes prefer to watch
television and your live view in those areas will apparently be the
rear ends of the players. Pretty funny concept.


3.) Arlington does NOT know how to handle parking. They've
had a baseball team for over thirty years and simple things like
having a traffic cop direct traffic after the game to let people escape
or adding on-ramps to the various interstates - seem to be outside
the realm of reasonable to the Arlington powers that be. If you thought
parking was bad at the old stadium, you're in for a REAL treat here.
It will be ten times worse. And this is coming from a guy who went
to a rock concert where they didn't sell half of the stadium. The place
was full - but they didn't sell the entire section - or the 20,000 standing
room only tickets Jones envisions for football games.