IRVING, Texas — A lot of players never get the sendoff that Texas Stadium is going to get Sunday morning.
“You mean, ‘most’ players,” Billy Joe Dupree corrected.
“ALL players,” Walt Garrison chimed in.
“It’s getting more fanfare than I ever did,” said a laughing Drew Pearson, who belongs in the Ring of Honor and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. OK, that’s another column for another day.
This was just part of the good-natured chatter that filled the Las Colinas Marriott on Friday during a farewell/celebration luncheon for Texas Stadium, which will be imploded at daybreak Sunday.
Guest of honor Alicia Landry, whose husband, Tom, coached the Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium for 18 of his 29 seasons, found some welcome closure in knowing that “this beloved stadium … will never become tarnished, neglected or dishonored.”
And no surprise that it was Rayfield Wright, the Hall of Fame offensive tackle on those Landry Cowboys, who eloquently explained to us how it can be time to say goodbye even to things we hold dear.
“I had a 17-year-old German shepherd named Rex that was with me almost every day until just after I retired (in 1979),” Wright said. “I’d come home from practice and drink a cold beer — try to get my body back a little bit — and he’d drink a beer with me.”
Now I’m thinking, “OK, that’s 119 in dog years … that’s probably old enough to drink a beer.”
Rayfield continued: “Well, I ended up having to put Rex to sleep after 17 years. And now with all the memories I have of Texas Stadium, and how I loved playing in Texas Stadium for coach Landry, and (assistant) Jim Myers and all the coaches, and all my teammates, it’s a surreal situation to have to say goodbye … but it’s just time for Texas Stadium to go to sleep.”
Implosion doesn’t have to be hurtful or greedy or disloyal.
It’s just what we do in this country with our old sports venues or tired bridges or even antiquated casinos. We love a good implosion.
“(This implosion) doesn’t affect me one way or the other because I have memories of Texas Stadium. They can’t blow “those” up,” said Joe Avezzano, longtime Cowboys special-teams coach who noticed the deterioration of the stadium during his days as head coach of the Arena League Desperados, strolling through the hallways where the team had its offices.
“You realized then just how old and beat up and worn out it had gotten,” Avezzano said.
The Cowboys played 38 seasons at Texas Stadium before moving into Cowboys Stadium for the 2009 season.
In Irving, they won more than twice as many games as they lost (213-100), including 16-6 at money time in the playoffs. Four of the team’s record eight Super Bowl appearances were launched from conference title games at Texas Stadium (1971, ‘77, ‘93, ‘95).
“Sure, I’m sad,” admitted Pearson, who joined the Cowboys in 1973 and played 11 seasons at wide receiver. “Ever since I’ve been in Dallas, that stadium has been there, so it’s a part of me.”
But instead of calling Dr. Phil, Pearson sat down and wrote a book, “Remembering Texas Stadium” (Zone Press, $29.95), with Frank Luksa.
Texas Stadium, Pearson pointed out, had plenty of “quirky” traits that made it necessary for players to conquer the elements, from late-summer heat/reduced air flow to a highly crowned field that put an extra challenge into every pass route to the tricky tapestry of shadows that fell across the field, caused by the hole in the roof.
“My first game in that stadium was against the St. Louis Cardinals, and I mean it was a nightmare catching punts out of the shade into the sun or vice versa,” said Pearson, who fair-caught everything that day.
“Because of the elevation of the field, you always felt that you were on a stage … (and) those little quirks were home-field advantages for us.”
Dupree felt Texas Stadium “brought out the Hollywood in people,” whenever you put a crowd of 65,581 (capacity) beneath a hole in the roof so that “God could watch His favorite team play.”
D.D. Lewis, a Cowboys linebacker from the ‘70s, is credited for coining that phrase, although he set the record straight in “Texas Stadium: America’s Home Field” (Ascend Media, $22.95) by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s” Mac Engel.
Lewis told Engel in the book that several players were talking inside the locker room about that for a while; he “just happened to say it” when a bunch of reporters were around.
Cliff Harris, aka Capt. Crash, returned kickoffs and punts early in his career and recalled “it was like leaving a movie theater” to battle the shadows of Texas Stadium.
“It’d be about 130 degrees on the field, too,” Harris recalled.
Roger Staubach couldn’t make it to Friday’s $75-a-plate luncheon — attended by about 200 people and emceed by former NBC5 sportscaster Scott Murray of Murray Media — but he recently called it “the right stadium at the time … a football palace built by (team owner) Clint Murchison,” who was an engineering major at MIT.
“In 1971,” Murray told guests, “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog” (“Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night) was the No. 1 song, Archie Bunker (“All in the Family”) was the No. 1 TV show, a house cost $28,000, you could get a nice car for $3,500 and gas cost 36 cents a gallon.”
Added Garrison with a drawl: “Copenhagen and Skoal were 27 cents a can.”
He would know.
But what I wanted to know is how Tom Landry would be holding up this weekend.
Fine. Not overly sentimental, according to both Alicia Landry and son Tom Landry Jr.
“Lot of memories here, but history is history. You move onto bigger things,” said Landry Jr., who worked on the construction of Texas Stadium the summer it was built (cost: $35 million).
He believes that his father would see this weekend as a symbol of progress.
“You couldn’t coach a football team for 29 years if you weren’t open to new ideas,” explained Landry Jr.
Alicia Landry gave a 3 ½-minute speech and countless interviews. She received Irving’s “key to the city” from Mayor Herbert Gears.
“I don’t know why they’re blowing it up,” Alicia Landry said of Texas Stadium in one interview. “It would be a great place for high school football because it’s a more manageable size.
“But right now no one’s playing there … and you don’t want to see it sittin’ there lonesome.”
The rich history of Texas Stadium was presented in a four-minute video Friday. One outburst of applause came when the image of the late Wilford “Crazy Ray” Jones, donning his rodeo vest, chaps and a cowboy hat as the team’s original mascot, flashed across the screen. He died in 2007.
“I remember a stripper named Bubbles Cash who came to the games,” said Garrison, providing comic relief on this day. “I believe coach Landry looked at her one time. I looked at her a bunch.”
But what came out of this luncheon for closure is a belief that one implosion can’t wipe out a ton of memories.
“They can build anything there, I don’t care,” Pearson said. “It could be the Taj Mahal or Wal-Mart, but that will always be the place that Texas Stadium used to be.”
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