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Cowboys' loss hits pocketbook, too
Jan 7, 2007
Cowboys' loss hits pocketbook too
Frustrating playoff setback won't boost new stadium's coffers
By David Sweet / MSNBC
As kicker Martin Gramatica lined up for a potential game-winning field goal, it looked like the Dallas Cowboys were finally back.
Void of playoff victories since 1996 — way back when Barry Switzer coached the team — the franchise was poised to put a decade of mediocrity behind it.
But with that fumbled snap on a gimme field goal, the Dallas Cowboys gave away the game to the Seattle Seahawks, 21-20, Saturday night. Not only that, the franchise lost something even more important: a splendid chance to generate buzz for sponsorships, tickets, luxury-suite rentals and other amenities for its new stadium, which it seems to consider the Eighth Wonder of the World.
Slated to open in two years, during the 2009 season, the replacement for Texas Stadium will be no run-of-the-mill facility.
At 40 yards high, the retractable glass doors behind each end zone will be the tallest on earth. One video board — 180 feet long and 50 feet high — will be the largest in the world. With 80,000 seats for regular-season Cowboys games and up to 100,000 seats available for “major events,” it’ll be the NFL’s biggest stadium. Opening a year before the Giants-Jets venue in New Jersey, it will also be the first billion-dollar stadium in the U.S.
When the stadium designs were unveiled last month, the ceremony was worthy of Oscar night. According to Jaime Aron of the Associated Press, included were “a red-carpet entrance that actually was the team’s shade of blue,” and a computer-generated video of the interior that “referenced many architectural greats, such as the Pyramids in Egypt and the Colosseum.” Team owner Jerry Jones announced that the stadium’s glass exterior will “glow blue and silver during the day, then the colors will reverse at night.”
But what does all this mean if the team on the field is, well, pedestrian? The best-known Cowboys, wide receiver Terrell Owens and coach Bill Parcells, will probably be gone by the time the stadium in Arlington replaces Texas Stadium — especially if Parcells has to suffer ulcer-inducing losses like the one to the Seahawks. The newest face of the franchise, Tony Romo (starting quarterback and a formerly anonymous field goal holder), isn't the most popular guy in town anymore. If they keep playing .500 football, the Cowboys will never be bad enough to draft a major, marketable star to build fan excitement around, such as a Reggie Bush, or good enough to make the Super Bowl.
Will the franchise — one of the best-known brands in sports, which has been graced with historic names such as Staubach, Landry and Smith — be able to fill tens of thousands of extra seats in a world-class stadium fielding a star-starved team that shows no hope of being anything more than ordinary?
“Branded stars are always a huge benefit,” said David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute. But “given the fan avidity the team enjoys throughout the region, they can survive for a while without a headliner on the field or the sideline.
“Having said this,” Carter added, “this generation’s impatient sports fan requires immediate gratification — gratification that seldom accompanies back-to-back (9-7) seasons.”
Daniel G. Belmont, president of Millsport, a sports marketing company, believes the Cowboys will be able to market themselves with or without stars by promoting their storied tradition.
“Jerry Jones and his staff are careful to tap into those emotional bonds to help sell tickets and sponsorships,” he noted.
Still, as the Cowboys begin to woo individuals and corporations to become mainstays in the new facility, a scintillating playoff run would have been a welcome sales tool. Because at this point, when the Cowboys’ stadium opens, only one spectator is sure to watch, according to franchise lore: God himself, gazing in through the hole in the roof.
And if the team continues dropping the ball, the man upstairs may even look away.
