Jerry Jones and the Dallas dream
By Ashley Fox
Inquirer Staff Writer
ARLINGTON, Texas - It is appropriately ostentatious, the monstrous steel, concrete and glass dream of Jerry Jones' that sits on a huge expanse of dirt between Dallas and Fort Worth. Like the Dallas Cowboys' owner, the new stadium that next year will house America's Team is bold, innovative, unique, controversial and staggeringly expensive.
Nearly 20 years after he paid more than anyone thought the Cowboys franchise was worth, Jones is building a $1.1 billion stadium with a mix of public and private funds in Arlington that has two quarter-of-a-mile arches, a retractable roof, 300 club suites, a 60-yard overhead HD video board and a capacity for football that could exceed 80,000.
It is a risky endeavor, given the delicate economic climate in this country, but as he was in 1989, Jones is committed to the risk with future earnings the desired reward. The 65-year-old Jones has no plans to sell his beloved franchise, only to make it more profitable, and he has assembled an all-star roster that finished last season 13-3 and is considered by many a front-runner to win the Super Bowl.
For a man who made his money in the oil business before turning a $150 million investment into a franchise now valued by Forbes magazine at $1.6 billion, this stadium project was just another gamble Jones couldn't refuse, no matter the personal or professional cost.
"It would've been just a shame to make decisions for this franchise and to look at where it is stature-wise and not put a venue with it," Jones said last week while his team prepared to face the Eagles in the final Monday Night Football game at Texas Stadium.
"I would've always looked back and thought I shortchanged it. I would've said the same thing if I'd passed on the Dallas Cowboys. I would've never forgiven myself. Our NFL fans, they deserve to have a venue that I hope this approaches. We're trying."
Jones paused, as if assessing the enormity of what he's doing building the most expensive stadium in the world.
"I had to go for it," Jones said.
Stars for the stage
The Cowboys locker room is inhabited by eclectic, high-priced players who Jones hopes will win the franchise its sixth Lombardi Trophy. The timing of the Cowboys' rise back among the NFL's elite is no accident.
Jones has been trying to recapture the glory of the early-mid 1990s, when Dallas won three Super Bowls in four years to validate the owner's hands-on and often meddlesome approach to running a team as its president and general manager. But in order to generate momentum and assuage fans annoyed by high ticket prices in the new stadium, Jones knows he has to put a winner on the field now - and one that can end the 12-year postseason drought.
Jones is convinced that, after years of trying to find Troy Aikman's replacement, he has it in the young, sure-armed Tony Romo, and he has protected Romo with one of the league's best offensive lines, a slew of weapons, and a formidable defense. However, in building a team that could surpass last season's 13 wins and 12 Pro Bowl invitations, Jones has lavished money on players with sketchy pasts - wide receiver Terrell Owens, nose tackle Tank Johnson, and defensive back Adam "Pacman" Jones, whom the league suspended for last season because of his off-the-field conduct.
After four seasons under the heavy-handed Bill Parcells, the Cowboys have a laid-back, defensive-minded coach in Wade Phillips and his heir apparent in offensive coordinator Jason Garrett.
"We're a better team," said Jones, whose Cowboys opened the season with a 28-10 win at Cleveland. "Is that going to manifest itself in 13 wins again? I doubt it, but we're a better team. Do I know how hard it is to say we should do this, win this? I know better than that. I know how hard it is to win."
It's been hard for some fans accustomed to relative inexpensiveness of Texas Stadium to absorb the exorbitant "options" - or personal-seat licenses - the Cowboys are charging for the right to buy season tickets for the next 30 years.
While there are 8,000 seats that won't require seat options and will cost $590 for a 10-game season (eight regular-season and two preseason games), the 50,000 reserved seats in the end zones, upper decks and corners require a $2,000-to-$5,000 option. The club seats, which are between the end zones and closer to the field, are $3,400 for the season with options between $12,000 and $150,000.
The 300 suites, up from the initial plan for 200, cost up to $500,000 annually. More than 200 have been sold.
While the stadium is on schedule for its June 1 opening, there are concerns about the roads surrounding the stadium, and the parking. Reports estimate that some fans will have to park more than a mile away from the stadium, in either lots belonging to the Texas Rangers' Ballpark in Arlington or Six Flags over Texas. Also, Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck said that while the city is in the midst of a $270 million roadway-improvement project, "I don't think it's going to be ready" in time for next season.
"I think the first year is going to be tough traffic-wise," Cluck said.
There are plenty of perks. The stadium will have the largest HD video board in the world, 180 feet wide and nearly 72 feet high. It will hang 90 feet above the field, from the two monster arches that define the stadium, and will show game action as well as footage from eight in-house cameras.
Jones got the idea for the video board, which cost more than Arlington Stadium, at a Celine Dion concert in Las Vegas. The idea, he said, is to provide fans with behind-the-scenes action they wouldn't see watching on television.
"If a guy is going in for an X-ray, we might want him to be seen on that," Jones said. "If you've come in and you're in Section X in the Southwest corner of the end zone, we want you to feel like you've been flying around like Peter Pan seeing everything that's going on."
There is a private club at the 50-yard line on the lower level that will have a video board showing Phillips' view of the field. The players will enter and exit the field through the club, giving fans an up-close experience.
There are retractable doors behind the end zones and the retractable roof that, when open, is identical in size to the opening at Texas Stadium.
Arlington's financial commitment to the project is capped at $325 million, so Jones and the Cowboys are on the hook for the rest of the cost. Jones has been criticized for trying to extract every cent possible from the public - the Cowboys charged $100 just to get on the season-ticket waiting list - but sales are "going really well," team spokesman Brett Daniels said.
"This guy is one of the owners in the National Football League who . . . really is interested in providing the best on-field experience for his fans and the best product on the field for his fans," said Stephen A. Greyser, a Harvard Business School marketing professor specializing in the business of sports.
"I should note that all the complaining about the new stadium being farther out, if that's the case, the roads, and the costs of PSLs, a lot of that will diminish if they go deep in the playoffs this year, or get to the Super Bowl, much less win it. Then you'll find [people who will say], 'We want to make sure we're on that list. We'll pay for PSLs.' That's why he focuses on putting a winning product on the field."
Celebrities, paparazzi
Inside Romo's locker at the Cowboys' practice facility is an elementary-school assignment written in pencil by Romo's nephew, Caleb. With Caleb's spelling intact, it reads:
Tony is my unkle. He plays for the Dallas Cowboys. Tony is cool. He is my favorite. He has a girlfriend. I thenk he likes girls. That is funny.
It's not funny to Jones. It's good business.
Since late last season, Romo has been dating Texas native and budding country-music star Jessica Simpson. Once viewed by fans as the Cowboys' curse, Simpson has been omnipresent recently, promoting her new album and declaring her love for Romo.
"I just told him today, 'You're the love of my life,' " Simpson said in the cover story of the Sept. 8 issue of People magazine.
"I don't know what it is," Romo said when asked about his celebrity. "I used to be like, 'Oh, it's all part of this, or it's just because of this.' I don't know anymore. I'm sure part of it is being the Cowboys quarterback and part of it dating someone in the industry, the music industry, and another part of it is whatever. It is what it is."
Romo got even more attention this week when an elderly couple told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he had stopped to help the couple fix a flat tire.
While his aw-shucks quarterback downplays it, Jones likes the buzz surrounding Romo and Simpson because, as he sees it, it adds interest in his team. He said that Romo is getting better and working harder, and that his personal life is not detracting from his day job.
"I like it because it transcends football, and it creates an entertainment aspect to our games as well as our franchise," Jones said. "It's good. Never at any level, whether when I played or as an owner of the Cowboys, I've never seen the kind of thing he's criticized for affect a player negatively at all. I think that it creates fans and perks fan interest.
"When you look at maybe some of the things that I've addressed in 20 years with the Dallas Cowboys off the field, this is child's play."
Move that over there
As he is with his team, Jones is hands-on with the stadium, which is part of the reason it has soared in cost from the initial estimates of $650 million. If Jones sees something he doesn't like or something that will increase revenue or fan friendliness, he changes it.
"To his credit, he's kind of a student of all this," said Jack Hill, the director of stadium construction who was instrumental in building the Arlington ballpark and the American Airlines Center in Dallas. "It's his dream, and we're responsible for building his dream, which is for this to be the best."
The stadium will put the Cowboys atop the NFL in revenue, Jones has said, and it has made the Cowboys the most valuable team in the league, according to Forbes. The Cowboys have not announced a naming sponsor, although AT&T is the front-runner for a deal that would include weekly exclusive content for AT&T to distribute across its wireless, Internet and cable networks, the Star-Telegram reported.
The stadium will be home to Super Bowl XLV in 2011, the Cotton Bowl, and a future Notre Dame game, but it will transcend football. The NCAA is considering the stadium for a Final Four between 2012 and 2016, the Cowboys and Mavericks have bid on the 2010 NBA All-Star Game, and there will be concerts there, including, most likely, U2 next summer.
It is risky endeavor even for a risk-taker, but Jones said he had to take it.
"I have a long-term view of what we're doing here," Jones said.
"The easiest route for me would be to stay at Texas Stadium, renovate it, not spend much money at all from the standpoint of the team or me, and coach football. That'd be easy . . . but I couldn't live with that."
Inquirer Staff Writer
ARLINGTON, Texas - It is appropriately ostentatious, the monstrous steel, concrete and glass dream of Jerry Jones' that sits on a huge expanse of dirt between Dallas and Fort Worth. Like the Dallas Cowboys' owner, the new stadium that next year will house America's Team is bold, innovative, unique, controversial and staggeringly expensive.
Nearly 20 years after he paid more than anyone thought the Cowboys franchise was worth, Jones is building a $1.1 billion stadium with a mix of public and private funds in Arlington that has two quarter-of-a-mile arches, a retractable roof, 300 club suites, a 60-yard overhead HD video board and a capacity for football that could exceed 80,000.
It is a risky endeavor, given the delicate economic climate in this country, but as he was in 1989, Jones is committed to the risk with future earnings the desired reward. The 65-year-old Jones has no plans to sell his beloved franchise, only to make it more profitable, and he has assembled an all-star roster that finished last season 13-3 and is considered by many a front-runner to win the Super Bowl.
For a man who made his money in the oil business before turning a $150 million investment into a franchise now valued by Forbes magazine at $1.6 billion, this stadium project was just another gamble Jones couldn't refuse, no matter the personal or professional cost.
"It would've been just a shame to make decisions for this franchise and to look at where it is stature-wise and not put a venue with it," Jones said last week while his team prepared to face the Eagles in the final Monday Night Football game at Texas Stadium.
"I would've always looked back and thought I shortchanged it. I would've said the same thing if I'd passed on the Dallas Cowboys. I would've never forgiven myself. Our NFL fans, they deserve to have a venue that I hope this approaches. We're trying."
Jones paused, as if assessing the enormity of what he's doing building the most expensive stadium in the world.
"I had to go for it," Jones said.
Stars for the stage
The Cowboys locker room is inhabited by eclectic, high-priced players who Jones hopes will win the franchise its sixth Lombardi Trophy. The timing of the Cowboys' rise back among the NFL's elite is no accident.
Jones has been trying to recapture the glory of the early-mid 1990s, when Dallas won three Super Bowls in four years to validate the owner's hands-on and often meddlesome approach to running a team as its president and general manager. But in order to generate momentum and assuage fans annoyed by high ticket prices in the new stadium, Jones knows he has to put a winner on the field now - and one that can end the 12-year postseason drought.
Jones is convinced that, after years of trying to find Troy Aikman's replacement, he has it in the young, sure-armed Tony Romo, and he has protected Romo with one of the league's best offensive lines, a slew of weapons, and a formidable defense. However, in building a team that could surpass last season's 13 wins and 12 Pro Bowl invitations, Jones has lavished money on players with sketchy pasts - wide receiver Terrell Owens, nose tackle Tank Johnson, and defensive back Adam "Pacman" Jones, whom the league suspended for last season because of his off-the-field conduct.
After four seasons under the heavy-handed Bill Parcells, the Cowboys have a laid-back, defensive-minded coach in Wade Phillips and his heir apparent in offensive coordinator Jason Garrett.
"We're a better team," said Jones, whose Cowboys opened the season with a 28-10 win at Cleveland. "Is that going to manifest itself in 13 wins again? I doubt it, but we're a better team. Do I know how hard it is to say we should do this, win this? I know better than that. I know how hard it is to win."
It's been hard for some fans accustomed to relative inexpensiveness of Texas Stadium to absorb the exorbitant "options" - or personal-seat licenses - the Cowboys are charging for the right to buy season tickets for the next 30 years.
While there are 8,000 seats that won't require seat options and will cost $590 for a 10-game season (eight regular-season and two preseason games), the 50,000 reserved seats in the end zones, upper decks and corners require a $2,000-to-$5,000 option. The club seats, which are between the end zones and closer to the field, are $3,400 for the season with options between $12,000 and $150,000.
The 300 suites, up from the initial plan for 200, cost up to $500,000 annually. More than 200 have been sold.
While the stadium is on schedule for its June 1 opening, there are concerns about the roads surrounding the stadium, and the parking. Reports estimate that some fans will have to park more than a mile away from the stadium, in either lots belonging to the Texas Rangers' Ballpark in Arlington or Six Flags over Texas. Also, Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck said that while the city is in the midst of a $270 million roadway-improvement project, "I don't think it's going to be ready" in time for next season.
"I think the first year is going to be tough traffic-wise," Cluck said.
There are plenty of perks. The stadium will have the largest HD video board in the world, 180 feet wide and nearly 72 feet high. It will hang 90 feet above the field, from the two monster arches that define the stadium, and will show game action as well as footage from eight in-house cameras.
Jones got the idea for the video board, which cost more than Arlington Stadium, at a Celine Dion concert in Las Vegas. The idea, he said, is to provide fans with behind-the-scenes action they wouldn't see watching on television.
"If a guy is going in for an X-ray, we might want him to be seen on that," Jones said. "If you've come in and you're in Section X in the Southwest corner of the end zone, we want you to feel like you've been flying around like Peter Pan seeing everything that's going on."
There is a private club at the 50-yard line on the lower level that will have a video board showing Phillips' view of the field. The players will enter and exit the field through the club, giving fans an up-close experience.
There are retractable doors behind the end zones and the retractable roof that, when open, is identical in size to the opening at Texas Stadium.
Arlington's financial commitment to the project is capped at $325 million, so Jones and the Cowboys are on the hook for the rest of the cost. Jones has been criticized for trying to extract every cent possible from the public - the Cowboys charged $100 just to get on the season-ticket waiting list - but sales are "going really well," team spokesman Brett Daniels said.
"This guy is one of the owners in the National Football League who . . . really is interested in providing the best on-field experience for his fans and the best product on the field for his fans," said Stephen A. Greyser, a Harvard Business School marketing professor specializing in the business of sports.
"I should note that all the complaining about the new stadium being farther out, if that's the case, the roads, and the costs of PSLs, a lot of that will diminish if they go deep in the playoffs this year, or get to the Super Bowl, much less win it. Then you'll find [people who will say], 'We want to make sure we're on that list. We'll pay for PSLs.' That's why he focuses on putting a winning product on the field."
Celebrities, paparazzi
Inside Romo's locker at the Cowboys' practice facility is an elementary-school assignment written in pencil by Romo's nephew, Caleb. With Caleb's spelling intact, it reads:
Tony is my unkle. He plays for the Dallas Cowboys. Tony is cool. He is my favorite. He has a girlfriend. I thenk he likes girls. That is funny.
It's not funny to Jones. It's good business.
Since late last season, Romo has been dating Texas native and budding country-music star Jessica Simpson. Once viewed by fans as the Cowboys' curse, Simpson has been omnipresent recently, promoting her new album and declaring her love for Romo.
"I just told him today, 'You're the love of my life,' " Simpson said in the cover story of the Sept. 8 issue of People magazine.
"I don't know what it is," Romo said when asked about his celebrity. "I used to be like, 'Oh, it's all part of this, or it's just because of this.' I don't know anymore. I'm sure part of it is being the Cowboys quarterback and part of it dating someone in the industry, the music industry, and another part of it is whatever. It is what it is."
Romo got even more attention this week when an elderly couple told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he had stopped to help the couple fix a flat tire.
While his aw-shucks quarterback downplays it, Jones likes the buzz surrounding Romo and Simpson because, as he sees it, it adds interest in his team. He said that Romo is getting better and working harder, and that his personal life is not detracting from his day job.
"I like it because it transcends football, and it creates an entertainment aspect to our games as well as our franchise," Jones said. "It's good. Never at any level, whether when I played or as an owner of the Cowboys, I've never seen the kind of thing he's criticized for affect a player negatively at all. I think that it creates fans and perks fan interest.
"When you look at maybe some of the things that I've addressed in 20 years with the Dallas Cowboys off the field, this is child's play."
Move that over there
As he is with his team, Jones is hands-on with the stadium, which is part of the reason it has soared in cost from the initial estimates of $650 million. If Jones sees something he doesn't like or something that will increase revenue or fan friendliness, he changes it.
"To his credit, he's kind of a student of all this," said Jack Hill, the director of stadium construction who was instrumental in building the Arlington ballpark and the American Airlines Center in Dallas. "It's his dream, and we're responsible for building his dream, which is for this to be the best."
The stadium will put the Cowboys atop the NFL in revenue, Jones has said, and it has made the Cowboys the most valuable team in the league, according to Forbes. The Cowboys have not announced a naming sponsor, although AT&T is the front-runner for a deal that would include weekly exclusive content for AT&T to distribute across its wireless, Internet and cable networks, the Star-Telegram reported.
The stadium will be home to Super Bowl XLV in 2011, the Cotton Bowl, and a future Notre Dame game, but it will transcend football. The NCAA is considering the stadium for a Final Four between 2012 and 2016, the Cowboys and Mavericks have bid on the 2010 NBA All-Star Game, and there will be concerts there, including, most likely, U2 next summer.
It is risky endeavor even for a risk-taker, but Jones said he had to take it.
"I have a long-term view of what we're doing here," Jones said.
"The easiest route for me would be to stay at Texas Stadium, renovate it, not spend much money at all from the standpoint of the team or me, and coach football. That'd be easy . . . but I couldn't live with that."
posted by The Gryphon at 9:23 AM
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