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
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