Jerry is the stadium king; now it’s up to the Cowboys
By JENNIFER FLOYD ENGEL

ARLINGTON — When I finally stumbled upon Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, away from my media brethren late Friday, he had DeMarcus Ware and Roy Williams in a simultaneous sleeper hold.

Roy cradled in his left arm, DeMarcus in his right and a smile on his face that I had only seen in pictures, faded pictures including Barry and Jimmy and Lombardis and Triplets. Owner Jones looked as happy as I have seen him, and he deserved every second.

There are times in my job when all there is to do is give props. So I stopped Owner Jones simply to say:

“Well done, sir. Well done.”

I had never been to JerryWorld prior to Friday, and wow. Just wow. Owner Jones, with help from your tax dollars, Arlingtonians, has created an almost perfect football stadium. It is beautiful and light and functional and grandiose. About the only complaint I have heard is the video board hangs too low, and I expect a lot of NFL owners simply have a serious case of video board envy.

“Wait, this is your first time,” Owner Jones said, after listening to my impressions then launched into a mini-audio tour.

He noted features I may not have just noticed by walking around, like the fact this is the only stadium in all of sports where two full-size trucks could drag race underneath if they wanted. I don’t know why they would ever need this but it sounded cool.

And then Owner Jones said the most real thing I have heard from him in a long time: “I hope we have the team to live up to this.”

The tone is important here. It was not said with a sigh, or like a man who did not believe, but rather with the same optimistic enthusiasm he had dripped with regards to his stadium. He believes the team will. It was not unlike the sentiment he voiced at his State of the Cowboys address in San Antonio. “I think the team will play to the level of the stadium” were his exact words. I thought it was silly at the time, his insistence the stadium might positively impact this season.

What I think now is he has a right to think this.

Not unlike with the stadium, Owner Jones has done his part spending the cash to sign the players who needed to be retained with the exception of Ware. (I thought the sleeper hold might have been a negotiating tactic, but both said they are not there yet. And really what is taking so long anyway? If Patrick Crayton and MBIII warranted their deals, DWare definitely does). What I am quibbling about here is timing. Otherwise, I think the owner has done his job.

I always get in trouble when defending Jerry the owner; the inevitable retort is, how good can he be since he will not fire his GM and that guy is an idiot.

Except every report I heard/read/saw from training camp was about just how loaded this team is talent-wise. I certainly saw indications of that Friday, with Felix Jones’ explosiveness and just how good they looked in double-tight-end formations. And with so much talk about making the offense Romo-friendly, it is clear the defense was made Wade-friendly. Of course, Owner Jones also overruled himself and jettisoned his locker room malcontents, headaches and butt pains.

So how exactly can you rip the owner? Yes, he brought back a coach who yours truly thought deserved the heave ho, but word is he’s changed, and what he has done with this defense is nothing short of miraculous and is going to pay dividends in December and beyond.

We shall see.

And just fyi, it’s not personal. It’s football.

Where I come from, NFL coaches are judged by playoff wins, the more the better. And if Wade Phillips wins one or two playoff games this season, everybody will talk about what a good coach he is. But until then, I always kind of liked the old Big Bill-ism about confidence being born of demonstrated ability. Win one or two, then complain about criticism.

And that brings me back to, maybe, my favorite feature of JerryWorld, which is the fan gauntlet players and coaches walk to get back to the locker room.

It is going to be fun after big victories, not so good after ugly, like against Baltimore a year go. It might not matter if the coach is tougher. If the right fans are down there, it may handle any butt chewing the team needs.

The stadium really does have almost everything and more, and Owner Jones has every right to be excited. The only thing missing now is playoff wins.

He did his part. It is their turn.

NFL’s competition committee discusses Dallas Cowboys’ digital board
By DAVID MOORE / The Dallas Morning News

IRVING – The NFL’s competition committee has met to discuss the height of the digital board at Cowboys Stadium.

The verdict?

Let’s just say it remains up in the air.

A league spokesman confirmed that the committee forwarded its recommendations to NFL staff on how to address the issue. Those recommendations have been passed along to Roger Goodell. The commissioner has the power to rule on the matter since the season is under way, and he does not have to run his resolution by the league’s Board of Governors.

A decision or statement is likely to be rendered before the Cowboys host the San Francisco 49ers on Saturday night.

Jerry Jones, meanwhile, went on the offensive Tuesday. In an interview on the club’s flagship station, KRLD-FM 105.3, Jones talked about how punters must deal with rain, sleet, snow and all kinds of conditions.

Jones compared the punt of Tennessee’s A.J. Trapasso, which hit the digital board in the third quarter of last week’s game, to the swing that baseball players take in the home run derby during All-Star festivities.

The Cowboys owner said the club had spent tons of time and research to determine how high punts fly before setting the board 90 feet above the field and cautioned against a knee-jerk reaction.

“I think the key is that in a competitive situation, we’re gonna be fine,” Jones said in the interview. “I’m not saying the ball won’t hit sometimes up there, but it should be fine.”

When asked about the attention the issue has received nationally, coach Wade Phillips had a simple explanation.

“Dallas Cowboys. Jerry Jones,” he said. “It’s just the nature of things with Dallas.

“But I don’t see them [punters] hitting it very much, no matter how they kick.”

Competition committee forwards recommendations
David Moore/Reporter, Dallas Morning News

The NFL’s competition committee has completed its conference call to discuss the heighth of the video board at Cowboys Stadium.

A league spokesman confirmed the committee forwarded recommendations to NFL staff on how to address the issue. Those recommendations will be forwarded to commissioner Roger Goodell, who has the power to rule on the matter since the season is underway. The resolution does not have to be run by the league’s Board of Governors.

As Todd Archer mentioned in an earlier post, no official announcement is expected today. That doesn’t mean we aren’t poking around.

Stay tuned.

Competition committee having a conference call
Todd Archer, Dallas Morning News

The Competition Committee will have its conference call today regarding the digital board at Cowboys Stadium but any announcement is not expected today, according to a league spokesman.

And here’s the process of how a possible change would work – the Competition Committee does not set policy. It only makes a recommendation. And according to the league, Commissioner Roger Goodell has the authority to interpret or amend rules in unique situations like this when a season has already started.

In other words, it doesn’t need to be voted on by the ownership group.

Here are some other issues involving the board:

** shouldn’t the game clock be reset? A team could just run out the final few seconds by continuing to hit the board.

** what if there is a penalty before (like a hold) or after (like running into the kicker) the punt hits the board? does the penalty count even though there would be a redo?

Jerry Jones wanted wow in Cowboys Stadium, and he paid for it
By RANDY GALLOWAY, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

So far, through two futbol matches, and George, the Jonases and Paul, plus the daily tours, I have yet to hear a negative word. Be prepared, I’m repeatedly advised, to be wowed.

“And that’s in spite of Jerry,” a guy told me Thursday. That guy was Jerry Jones, who laughed at his own line.

But having had an almost-daily exterior view since the groundbreaking in April of ’06, tonight I take my first look inside Arlington’s big boy.

Tonight is why Jerry built it expensive, and built what he proclaims as the greatest stadium ever, which I also haven’t heard disputed by anyone who’s seen it.

It’s football tonight. Just exhibition football — Cowboys and Titans — but national TV cameras will be there, with a stadium in more of a starring role than any player.

“When they line up for that opening kickoff, that’s when the new stadium will officially arrive,” Jones said. “My anticipation level ranks right up there with any Super Bowl pre-game jitters.

“This has been built because of the name of the franchise. The heritage and tradition of the Dallas Cowboys allowed it to happen, and those are things others get credit for, because they happened long before I arrived.”

And then came, maybe, a zinger.

“I know this. It’s built right where it should have been built,” added Jerry.

Hello, city of Dallas.

There’s been plenty of muttering debate over there to the east that centers on previous city leaders doing the right, or wrong, thing.

“Why there?” they still ask in Dallas. “Why in Arlington?”

Because Arlington could. And did. The same, by the way, as Irving could and did in the late ’60s, as the Dallas city leaders of that time also fiddled political thumbs.

“We were conducting extensive polls of different area cities in 2004,” Jerry said. “In Dallas, if it had come to a vote, as we asked, the new stadium would have been approved by 65 percent, our polls showed.”

And in Arlington at the time?

“Under 50 percent,” Jones said.

But in early 2004, the Dallas County judge refused to allow the issue to be put on the ballot for the presidential election in November. It was a political move, because her party feared the issue would bring out many people who might otherwise stay home. And those people would vote for the other party.

That political move, preventing the issue to be on the ballot, was the point when the city of Dallas no longer became a stadium player with Jones. That was also the time when Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck picked up the phone, called Jones, and asked, “Why not us?”

Fast-forward to that election in 2004. Voters in Arlington approved a sales tax on a new Cowboys stadium by an overwhelming 55 percent.

Jones never looked back.

“A guy who deals in high finance told me ‘[Dallas] threw you in the briar patch,’ ” said Jerry, laughing.

After pondering that one, then it hit me. Oh, yeah. The rabbit. The briar patch. And the rabbit was much better off. It’s been awhile.

As promised, Jones built the biggest, maybe the best (again, I see it tonight for the first time), and spared no expense.

“By the way, one point two billion,” Jerry said Thursday, I guess in reference to a national story that had the cost at $1.15 billion.

In the beginning, the bottom line on the stadium was listed at $650,000,000 with Arlington taxpayers contributing half, and the city’s share was frozen at that point.

Why $1.2 billion?

“To increase the scope, to expand the experience,” Jones said. “When people see it — outside, then inside — to make it something that carries an impact. To make it something that every Cowboys fan, whether in person, or on TV, can say, ‘That’s us. That’s the Cowboys.’ ”

“Yes, it makes sense that [the franchise] benefits from this stadium, but I want everyone to benefit. The city. The fans. That’s what we promised this stadium will do. I hope we have delivered on that promise.”

Sticker shock over ticket prices dominated news for weeks this spring. Doubt over the Cowboys being able to fill the stadium at those prices surfaced.

I also admit to cussing Jones and Cluck more than once while being trapped in road-construction hell in north Arlington, construction that is ongoing and for some of us, seemingly endless.

But since the George Strait concert officially opened the place, the emphasis has been on the place. Ticket sales, according to the Cowboys, have gone extremely well. We’ll know when the doors open for the first regular-season game, or at least the second, since 100,000 may be there for the first.

“This stadium, right here in Arlington, will be seen on national TV more than anything else in the country,” said Jerry. “That’s not Jones arm-waving, that’s just fact. That’s the Dallas Cowboys.”

To know Jerry for the last 20 years is to disagree with him repeatedly on football, but also to understand when it came to building a showpiece, using tax money, his money, ticket money, sponsor money, he would deliver the wow factor.

I keep hearing he has. So waiting to be wowed, bring on tonight.

Randy Galloway’s Galloway and Co. can be heard 3-6 p.m. weekdays on ESPN/103.3 FM.

Stadium hype makes Cowboys’ preseason game special
By CLARENCE E. HILL JR.

SAN ANTONIO — The first regular-season game at the new Cowboys Stadium is Sept. 20 against the New York Giants.

Make no mistake about it; Friday’s matchup against the Tennessee Titans is not just another meaningless preseason game.

It is the first time the Cowboys will play in their $1.15 billion facility as players.

Some players took in the George Strait concert. There was also an official team tour.

But there is nothing like suiting up and watching yourself run on the field on the giant digital scoreboard for the first time.

“I didn’t want to see it until I had to play in it, but unfortunately I had to do what they said,” said wide receiver Roy Williams about the tour. “We went up there and sat down and saw the (video board) JumboTron and the first thing I said was, ‘Man, if I could hook my PlayStation up to this thing. What a super screen.

“My dream that I’ve been thinking about ever since that thing got built was scoring the first touchdown in that stadium. I know I’m going to have the first first down and I’m excited about that.”

The excitement is not just among the players. It’s throughout the whole organization. Coach Wade Phillips hasn’t determined playing time yet. But look for the starters to play into the second quarter, giving the fans that show up for the preseason home opener a little treat.

The first-teamers only played two series in last Thursday’s 31-10 preseason loss at Oakland.

“It’s exciting,” quarterback Tony Romo said. “As a team, I know the players look really forward to getting out there and competing in a place that is obviously going to be unique. I think it means a lot for a lot of different people including us and were going to try to make it special for everybody else.”

Said tight end Jason Witten: “I think collectively everybody will be excited to see all of the work, all of the talk about it, to be able to be there live and be a part of it is going to be exciting”

Training camp ended Wednesday at the Alamodome.