Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Cowboys seeking redemption
Dallas wants to host Super Bowl after first attempt had issues
ARLINGTON, Texas — The Dallas Cowboys want a do-over on hosting the Super Bowl after horrid weather and a seating fiasco ruined their first try seven years ago.
While the wait will easily be more than a decade and with no indication the big game is coming back soon, last weekend’s draft at least showed the NFL that what is becoming its spring Super Bowl went off without a hitch in North Texas.
“Obviously we’ve got a little chip on our shoulder about that one because we had a snowstorm and it didn’t go perfect,” executive vice president Stephen Jones said last week, referring to the 2011 title game.
“There’s a big school of thought in the league that these things should go to kind of vacational-type spots, South Florida and Southern California and Phoenix and New Orleans. I get that. We’d still like a redo there.”
The Cowboys hosted the first draft in an NFL stadium, and the league said about 100,000 people showed up in and around AT&T Stadium in Arlington, halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, for the first round Thursday night.
Crowd size was limited by the league to about 20,000 indoors, using just one end of the 80,000-seat stadium with a retractable roof, which was closed. The largest screens of the giant video board that hangs over the center of the field were mostly out of view.
The theater setup is still preferred by the NFL for an event that spent many years at Radio City Music Hall in New York before back-to-back drafts in Chicago and last year’s popular stop in Philadelphia on the steps of the art museum in front of the Rocky statue.
This larger venue allowed officials to try something they’d been thinking about for a while. Groups of seats designated for fans of each team on the field in front of the stage were a hit. The idea derived from political conventions fed what officials thought was an energetic setting.
“It exceeded our expectations in terms of the energy down here,” said Peter O’Reilly, who oversees special events for the NFL. “It’s been a terrific event for us as the draft continues to evolve.”
Stephen Jones doesn’t expect the draft to come back soon because the idea now is to move it annually. O’Reilly isn’t sure it will be in a stadium again because each city has ideas about how to make the draft unique.
Super Bowls have been awarded through the 2021 season , including two with new stadiums (Atlanta, Los Angeles) and another with a renovated one (Miami, which will get its record 11th title game).