IRVING, Texas - A confession, first.
I don't remember the first time I went to Texas Stadium.
I remember covering Cowboys games at the Cotton Bowl. I know I didn't go to that first game against the Patriots in October of 1971. I know I started covering some that season, as a cub radio reporter in my 20s right out of school and Army National Guard active duty. But I could not tell you for the life of me when the first time was.
And now it's time for the stadium to go. And frankly, a lot of us don't know quite what to think, or feel.
We write these nostalgic stories for print and broadcast because we must. It's the thing to do. You don't have an operation like the Dallas Cowboys shut down the pop stand and act like it doesn't matter. This is one of America's most valued and valuable sporting institutions. Where it plays matters.
It's just not as easy as you'd think to summarize what it means.
We've asked a number of current players what it means to them to be playing in the last game in stadium history. Their answer has been nearly unanimous: "Uh, sorry. Been a little busy. Trying to make the playoffs and everything, you know? Haven't really thought about it."
And that's an answer that makes sense.
(It also makes sense that if these players had done what they were supposed to do a few more times, this likely wouldn't be the last game played in the stadium. But it's the season of kindness and good cheer. Seems a little tacky to go there.)
There are preparations for a game that occupy every day of a week. And preparations for a gala send-off after the game that demand focus on detail. Who's got time to wax sentimental?
There's a reason for this, though, well beyond the stress of the normal workweek and the strain of dealing with the holidays. The reason, I believe, is the difference between football and baseball, coupled with the relativism of age.
Let's take them in reverse order. Texas Stadium isn't old enough to get choked up about. There, I said it.
This is not the Cotton Bowl Stadium. That venerable building, which will still be in operation, is hosting its final AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic on Jan. 2.
It will be the 73rd classic played in the Cotton Bowl. Texas Stadium is 37.
This is not Tiger Stadium, a turn of the century building that baseball's team in Detroit had to leave because it was falling apart, being torn down.
Richard Nixon was president when Texas Stadium was built, not Andrew Jackson. There may not have been cable or internet, but there was electricity and television.
Texas Stadium was unique and breathtaking when it opened. Technology just caught up to it.
It's also different from baseball stadiums that are unique hallmarks because baseball is different from football. Yankee Stadium was Monument Park and the right field porch. Fenway is the Green Monster. Wrigley Field is the ivy. The dimensions are different. Whole baseball teams were, and are, tailored to ballparks.
Football fields are the same. Same length, same width, same end zones, same hash marks and bench areas. College football is different because campuses are unique.
Very few NFL stadia are memorable. Texas Stadium has been, but mostly because of the personality of its tenant.
No mistakes, please: the designers did an amazing job. The proximity of the stands to the field gives the old girl as intimate a feeling as a 65,000-seat building can have. And the hole in the roof is a trademark.
But it became a trademark because of the unpredictable, emotional, spectacular, electric team that has called it home. Apologies to the times SMU football played at Texas Stadium or the North American Soccer League's Dallas Tornado, but Texas Stadium was a one-man woman. It was the Cowboys' home. No Three Rivers built from a cookie cutter for the Steelers and Pirates, or Veterans Stadium for the Eagles and Phillies, or Riverfront for the Bengals and Reds. One team, and what a team.
Only Tex Schramm could have run that team in the '70s and '80s.
Only Jerry Jones could own and run it now. This stadium became something to say goodbye to because of Roger Staubach and Bob Lilly and the Doomsday Defense, because of Drew and Harvey and Randy and Too Tall, because of Cliff and Charlie, and then TD and Thrill Hill. Because of Jimmy and the Triplets and Woody and Big L-A, even because of Big Bill. Only a team with Romo and T.O. and Ware and Witten could be the descendant of those, and take the show to the New Place.
This old girl told flashy, dramatic, entertaining stories. You know the best ones: the '79 December Washington game. Longley the Mad Bomber. NFC Championships with the old Vikings, the Packers and Favre, the 49ers. The Thanksgiving Ice Game. Jason and the Packers. Emmitt and the record.
The Ring of Honor is unique to Texas Stadium, never mind how many times it's been copied around the NFL. There had to be a Ring of Honor, because there was a Bob Hayes and a Schramm and a Landry. Even because of all the bad boys and bad times. They were part and parcel of the fabric of what still makes the Dallas Cowboys must-see TV.
And that's another reason it's a little difficult to get too nostalgic about this stadium. Some of the team's best and most memorable moments, most of you have watched on television because they happened on the road. All the Super Bowls, another difference from baseball. The Ice Bowl. Hail Mary. The championship game at Candlestick. Dorsett's 99-yard run. Just the way it was.
There's almost a poetic symmetry to the fact that this will be the last game, this Saturday night. If the NFL had had any sense of the dramatic, the last game at Texas Stadium would have been on a Sunday afternoon against Washington, and the TV analyst would be Fox's Troy Aikman, one of the greatest ever to play in the place. Not a Saturday night against a Baltimore Ravens team that has never played a game there, on the NFL Network, which most people around the country won't be able to see.
But that's football, isn't it. It's unpredictable and sometimes unfair and heartbreaking. Better not make plans, unless you're willing to change them.
And Texas Stadium, for all the Billy Graham revivals and Garth Brooks concerts and motocrosses, is a football stadium.
If you go Saturday night, please stay all the way to the end. The Cowboys have a post game celebration planned that if you're a Cowboys fan, you will absolutely not want to miss. Most of the greatest players and coaches who made this legend will come out and walk across the Texas Stadium star one final time. And then it will be time to go.
I am reminded of part of the lyrics of a song, "Goodbye Old Girl," from the musical "Damn Yankees." Aging Washington Senators fan Joe Hardy, having sold his soul to the devil so he can play for his beloved Washington Senators and lead them to just one pennant, must leave his sleeping wife in the middle of the night to be transformed into the young player who will lead his team to glory.
On his way out the door, Joe sings goodbye to his old girl. The song ends this way:
We've had squabblin' days when tears were brought about
But in a moment or two we would bill and coo
And never even knew
What we fought about
And now your Joe has to go
But he'll come back to you again
So sleep your sleep, old girl
Our love will keep, old girl, till then
My old girl
Goodbye I don't remember the first time I went to Texas Stadium. But I will remember the last. Goodbye, old girl.
Originally Posted by Dreadnought94
Sounds like a plan
I like the "switch" everyone keeps talking about. There was no "switch" about it, I'm pretty sure I was wearing my Dockery jersey though. And no, sadly I can't take credit for that picture, it is a great picture though, someone had a great camera that day.
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