Texas Stadium - History

History

In the mid-1960s, then-Cowboys owner Clint Murchison, Jr. realized that the area surrounding the Cotton Bowl had become unsafe and downtrodden, and it was not a location he wanted his season ticket holders to be forced to go through. Murchison was denied a request by Dallas mayor Erik Jonsonn to build a new stadium in downtown Dallas as part of a civic-bond package.

Murchison envisioned a new stadium with sky-boxes and one in which attendees would have to pay a personal seat license as a prerequisite to purchasing season tickets. With two games left for the Cowboys to play in the 1967 NFL season, Murchison and Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm announced a plan to build a new stadium in Irving, Texas.

Texas Stadium, along with the Pontiac Silverdome, Arrowhead Stadium, and Ralph Wilson Stadium were part of a new wave of football only stadia built after the AFL-NFL merger. Moreso than its contemporaries, Texas Stadium featured a proliferation of luxury boxes, which provided the team with a large new income source exempt from league revenue sharing.

The stadium would become an icon of the Cowboys with their rise in national prominence. Its field was surrounded by a blue wall emblazoned with white stars, a design replicated in Cowboys Stadium.

Read more about this topic:  Texas Stadium

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.
    Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)

    Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.
    Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)

    As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)