Giants will help open Cowboys' imperial palace
Photo credit: AP | Football fans react as Dallas Cowboys running back Marion Barber scores as touchdown, seen on the large screen over the field, in the first quarter of a preseason NFL football game against the Tennessee Titans, Friday, Aug. 21, 2009, in Arlington, Texas.
Sept. 13: Giants 23, Redskins 17
Cowboys Stadium in Dallas
Danny Clark summed up everyone's curiosity.
"I want to see that thing," the Giants linebacker said.
That thing, of course, is the gigantic cluster of four video screens that hang from the roof of Cowboys Stadium. The two that run parallel to the sidelines are 60 yards long and 24 yards high. Yes, they measure the screens in yards. It's a 600-ton chandelier, not exactly something you just pick up at Best Buy.
They used to say there was a hole in the Texas Stadium roof so God could look down and watch the Cowboys play. Now He can watch in Hi-Def.
The Giants and Cowboys, always a game that draws intense national interest, Sunday will be the first teams to play an NFL regular-season game in the $1.2-billion cathedral whose every detail has been overseen by owner Jerry Jones. From the video boards to the exclusive bar conveniently located between the Cowboys' locker room and the tunnel to the field - yes, the players run through a bar to get to the game - to the pavilion for 20,000 fans to have a standing-room- only spot, every inch of the building screams not just big, but Texas big.
The Cowboys are expecting a crowd close to 110,000, which would break the NFL regular-season record.
"It's going to feel like a college game again," Giants cornerback Terrell Thomas said. "One hundred ten thousand. That's SEC football right there."
The largest crowd for an NFL regular-season game was 103,467 for Arizona-St. Louis in Mexico City in 2005. The record for a game in the United States is 103,985 for the Super Bowl between the Steelers and Rams at the Rose Bowl in January 1980.
The record for any NFL game is 112,376 for a preseason game between the Cowboys and Houston Oilers in Mexico City in 1994. The new stadium probably won't reach that mark this weekend, but it will have a pretty good shot at it when it hosts the Super Bowl in 17 months.
As for Sunday, there will be plenty of players gazing at the structure and plenty of fans across the country - the game will be broadcast nationally on NBC - marveling at the amenities. But some Giants players were downplaying the atmosphere, which, considering Jones' theatrics, is likely to be like an Olympic opening ceremony, Super Bowl and Academy Awards show rolled into one.
"None of that matters," guard Rich Seubert said. "New stadium? I mean, we got a new stadium being built, too. [The field is] 100 yards long. Sidelines are the same. They got a bench on the sideline where I sit."
Eli Manning said the first thing he'll be looking for when he goes out for warm-ups is not the big video screen above his head but the smaller one behind each end zone with the flashing numbers.
"I think for a quarterback, you go in, find where the play clock is, little things like that," Manning said. "But besides that, we will go out there and warm up and get a good feel. Once the game starts, you've just got to play your game."
Tom Coughlin could have brought the team to the stadium Saturday night as a way of eliminating any wow factor. He chose not to, though he considered it.
"Certainly there will be some opportunities, if you will, to see the new stadium for the players," he said. "And once I think we do that, I think we will settle down and be ready to go."
This will be the Giants' first game at Cowboys Stadium, but the Cowboys have played two preseason games there. Tony Romo compared playing there to the scene in "Hoosiers" in which the measurements of the court are taken and prove to be the same dimensions as the gym back home in Hickory.
And that video board? Turns out it's at a perfect angle for the fans but not so much for the players.
"If you want to really arch your neck, you can [see it]," Romo said. "You have to look up pretty good.
"But it is a pretty cool spectacle."
