LITTLE ROCK — Jerry Jones built the NFL's Taj Mahal and, oops, no bathrooms.
He put a billion bucks and change into a building worthy of Dubai and, oops, the Dallas Cowboys' oil sheikforgot air conditioning, elevators and parking lots.
OK, those are figures of exaggerated speech to emphasize the Jonesing that Jerry has inflicted on the NFL and himself with a video board so big it looks like one of those massive alien spaceplatforms dwarfing cities in Armageddon. Maybe the Cowboys are holding back the roiling black clouds for the first time punter Mat McBriar slams a spiral off the league's biggest 2009 embarrassment not named Michael Vick.
And how can a professional-level punter miss what is being billed as history's largest HDTV? The thing overhangs the center of Cowboys Stadium at 90 feet above field level and runs from red zone to red zone, 60 yards. There are 48-foot wide "miniscreens" attached to each end so end-zone fans won't feel cheated after shelling out $179 per single-game ticket plus $75 to park.
It's not a football stadium, it's an upholstered stimulus package ...
But let Citizen Jones extol the nerve center of the Mother Ship's techno innards. I quote from the official Cowboys Stadium press kit (stadium. dallascowboys.com/media/ mediaPressKit.cfm):
"This is the first center-hung video board in football history," said Jerry Jones, owner and general manager of Dallas Cowboys Football Club. "The innovative technology will give every fan a great seat and the view is better than watching a 60-inch HDTV in your living room. You will be able to see the players as if you were standing on the sidelines creating a living, interactive aspect to the building."
HKS Sports & Entertainment, the same folks who gave us Citizens Bank Park, complete with slow-pitch softball power alleys, designed this latest monument to wretched excess.
Architect Bryan Trubey's modest assessment: "Swift form, powerful structure, agile movement and emulated colors serve as a strong link between the architectural form of the building and the primary use of the venue - the home of the Dallas Cowboys."
You'd think with all that form, power, agility and linkage to the football team, the blueprint guys would have consulted the pigskin guys and figured out how high the 180-foot-long videoboard should be hung to keeppunted footballs from bouncing off its underbelly.
Ray Guy, the only punter ever selected in the first round of the NFL Draft, told The Dallas Morning News he figured he could have kicked footballs over the thing, let alone doink them off its bottom. Guy is the same guy who pounded a punt off a Louisiana Superdome video board during the 1976 Pro Bowl. Ray estimates the board was 90 to 100 feet high and that he missed clearing it by a couple of yards.
Exactly what kind of testing wasdone that made these geniuses certain that hanging a minispaceship 90 feet over the turf would put Roger Goodell's signature out of harm's way?
In the stadium's baptism of ire Friday night, Tennessee Titans punter A.J. Trapasso splattered a boomer off the hanging tower of babble-on. Officials had no recourse but to order a "do-over" to resolve the unexpected turn of events in what is supposed to be history's most sophisticated and rule-intensive sport.
Do-over? In the National Finicky League? Where a taunt is taboo and taking your hat off after a score can cost you 15 yards? A do-over? What's next, quarterback counts to five before you can tackle him? "One Mississippi
" ...
Jones retorts, hey, there were 12 punts in the game and one out of 12 ain't bad. He says the massive, $20 million Mega-Mitsubishi will not be raised as much as an inch.
Meanwhile, the NFL competition committee will be the judge of that and is meeting this week.
How about this? You hit the TV, it's a 15-yard penalty and first down for the receiving team at the new spot? No matter how your punter is trained to angle kicks away from returners, punting a football is not a precise art and the NFL's 85-foot height guideline for objects that overhang the playing field is not only archaic, it was not designed with a monolith overspreading a 60-yard midsection of turf in mind.
Texas is the home office for collossal domed-stadium screwups. When Houston Astros owner Judge Roy Hofheinz presented us with the Ninth Wonder of the World, the Astrodome,he boasted no baseball would ever desecrate the lofty ceiling of the place. The Judge also set a hefty fine for any Astro attempting to fungo a baseball off it. He often monitored batting practice through the picture window of his lavish apartment overlooking right field, fine pad in hand.
The Philadelphia Phillies had the honor of playing the first regular-season game in the Astrodome. Chris Short pitched a 2-0 shutout. Dick Allen hit the first home run, a tape-measure shot to dead center. And veteran reliever Ed Roebuck, one of baseball's all-time great fungo batsmen, bounced a ball off the girders in fair territory during batting practice.
But it remained for Mike Schmidt to inflict the ultimate stroke at the Astrodome.
On June 10, 1974, the third baseman hit what ranks as the most prodigious single in big-league history. When the titanic shot to dead center left his bat, I was thinking it would hit that hokey home-run display high on the Astrodome's distant back wall.
But the baseball never got that far. It hit a large public address speaker hanging 117 feet over the AstroTurf at a spot 329 feet from home plate. There were runners on first and second and Schmidt was in his home-run trot. Under the ground rules the ball was in play and Schmidt settled for a single on what he considered the hardest-hit ball of his illustrious career.
A red-faced Judge Hofheinz ordered the speaker hauled up an additional 30 feet.
A defiant Jerry Jones apparently does not have that inexpensive option.
Sports, Pages 22 on 08/28/2009