Jerry Jones captained Arkansas’s 1964 national championship team, then made a fortune through Jones Oil and Land Lease. Soon after he bought the Cowboys in 1989, he fired the franchise’s only head coach to that point, Tom Landry, and its longtime general manager, “Tex” Schramm, whose duties Jones himself assumed. For these reasons, and his George Steinbrenner–esque ego, an online poll of Sports Illustrated readers in 2003 determined Jones was the most hated sports personality—in Texas.
Just five years after Jones bought the team, he asked the taxpayers to renovate the twenty-three-year-old Texas Stadium, including construction of executive suites, to allow him to make more money. When they didn’t promise everything Jones wanted, he started a bidding war among the Dallas suburbs of Grapevine, Coppell, and Arlington, to see who would give him the most.
Arlington “won,” by pledging $325 million of the estimated $650 million needed to build a state-of-the-art stadium. When Cowboys Stadium was finished in 2009, at One Legends Way, the estimate proved to be a little off. The final price tag was $1.3 billion, or twice the projection.
What do you get for $1.3 billion? Everything you want, plus a few things you never knew you wanted, starting with the world’s largest dome, the world’s largest column-free interior, and the world’s two largest high-definition TV screens, which span from 20-yard line to 20-yard line, weigh six hundred tons, and cost $40 million—$5 million more than the entire Texas Stadium cost to build in 1971. The TV screens are bigger than the basketball court that appeared under them during the 2010 NBA All-Star game.
The stadium boasts eighty-five thousand seats, the third most in the NFL—although it would rank fourth in the Big Ten, and barely ahead of Nebraska and Wisconsin. But it’s so big it can fit another twenty thousand standing fans without alarming fire marshals, partly due to the Party Pass areas behind each end zone. If you have to leave your seat to head to the concourse, or one of the 10 gift shops (the biggest covering eighteen thousand square feet), or one of the 824 concession stands that serve everything from sausage to sushi, or one of the 342 executive suites—which cost between $100,000 and $500,000 per season—you can still watch the game on one of five thousnd Sony LCDs installed throughout the stadium. Or you can admire one of the eighteen original works of art commissioned for the stadium.
The locals have given the stadium a number of nicknames, from the regal Cowboys’ Cathedral to Jerry World to the less sophisticated Boss Hog Bowl to Jones Town and, yes, the Death Star. Before too long, however, all those monikers will be replaced by whatever corporation pays $100 million or more for the naming rights.
• • •
At 8:00 a.m. on September 1, about the same time the Penn State players started boarding the blue buses, ESPNU began broadcasting outside Cowboys Stadium, followed by ESPN’s College GameDay from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Although it was eight hours before game time, the parking lot was already packed.
The fans lined up behind the set, hooting and hollering. One Alabama fan waved a sign that said NO, THAT WASN’T A UM PUNT. THAT WAS A DENARD ROBINSON THROW! A Michigan fan countered with a placard that declared CIVIL WAR CHAMPS.
After the broadcast finished, some fans killed the eight hours to kickoff at the U-M alumni club’s official tailgate on Collins Street, which offered drinks, a large barbecue spread, and some shade to give people refuge from the hundred-degree temperatures, all for a cover charge of $40. But far more did what came naturally in the stadium’s huge parking lot: tailgate as if they were pros. Which, of course, they were.
• • •
Eric Miller and I go back to the fourth grade. He grew up in Ann Arbor, met his wife at the University of Michigan, and has watched two children graduate from U-M, too. He now lives near Cleveland, where he’s contended with Buckeye fans for almost two decades. He’s a friendly and funny guy, but with enough fight in him to defend his alma mater—repeatedly—in his adopted state. But none of that feistiness was needed on that opening weekend in Dallas.
“Our pregame tailgate consisted of buying a canopy, a cheap table, coolers, ice, cups, and beer from the Walmart across the street from the stadium, then drinking for four hours,” he told me. “But our crimson-clad tailgating neighbors could not stand seeing us tailgate in such a ‘Northern manner.’ ”
So, without warning, their new friends in red heaped a metal bin of meat on Miller’s table “about twice the size of the one that tipped the Flintstone mobile on its side. I don’t know the origin of the meat, or how they got it to taste so good, but it just fell off of the enormous bone, and the small parts that didn’t were gnawed off caveman style. It was that good.”
Another friend of mine, Steve Chronis, flew down with four comrades, but he didn’t have quite as much fun. He was looking forward to tailgating because he suspected that might be the highlight of the day for Michigan fans. But the hundred-degree heat made the prospect of grilling bratwurst less appealing. They stuck to the beer, downing it fast before it got warm, and put ice on their heads to cool down. “Everybody was fighting to get under the three square feet of shade the only tree in the parking lot provided,” he said.
Chronis was also impressed by the Alabama fans’ hospitality, but he couldn’t help but notice their idea of tailgating was closer to our idea of a cocktail party or a wedding reception. Of course, it could be that Tide fans talk about the same things at their cocktail parties and wedding receptions that they do at their tailgates—namely, how good their football team is, and why it’s so much better than everyone else’s. On opening day, they covered all the usual reasons, but they could have added one more: the Midwest’s population has drained into the South, following the jobs.
At about 5:00 p.m., two hours before kickoff, the tailgaters escaped to the comfort of Jerry World, cooled by an eleven-thousand-ton air conditioner—the main reason the stadium’s utility bill can exceed $20,000 on a single hot day, like this one.
• • •
In April of 2012, Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon sent band director Scott Boerma an RFP, or a “request for proposal,” which is how CEOs ask for a sales pitch. Brandon told Boerma to put together a page of bullet points explaining why Boerma thought it would be better for the band to fly to Dallas for the season opener against Alabama, on September 1.
“We did so,” Boerma told me, “and we turned it in. We never expected Brandon to fly us down, but we hoped. At that point, it was my assumption that we would have a conversation about those bullet points, most likely making compromises on both sides. But a few days later, we heard that the answer was simply no. And that was it.”
Boerma and his band were stunned, but not as much as their loyal following, who blasted the decision through just about every medium available. For a week in late April, the band’s fate dominated Ann Arbor sports-talk radio—a first, to be sure. Invective aside, the callers’ main complaint was that if Brandon eliminated a home game or the possibility of an attractive home-and-home against Alabama for the chance to play in Jerry World primarily for the record paycheck, as he stated, then why couldn’t Michigan afford the $400,000 it would cost to take the marching band? After all, the band had to be one of the main attractions of college football Jerry Jones surely expected when he invited two college teams to play in his pleasure dome.
There seem to be a few reasons behind Brandon’s initial decision. A $4.7 million payday sounds like a lot, but according to MGoBlog’s Brian Cook, it was actually about $300,000 less than Michigan would have made if Brandon had scheduled Alabama for a home-and-home series, on the same terms Michigan had with Notre Dame. The deal looks even worse when you take into account the team’s travel costs to Dallas, and the substantial revenue from parking and concessions Michigan would have kept for a home game—not to mention the excitement such a game would generate among season-ticket holders from the day it was announced. Cook concludes, “This supposed financial windfall simply does not exist.”
But if you looked at Brandon’s initial de
cision to leave the band behind purely from a short-term business perspective, it made sense. The band trip would cost real money, coming right off the bottom line, but would not necessarily influence the outcome or ticket sales or TV ratings. Fans would not wait in long lines to buy Michigan Marching Band uniforms—be they classic or “alternative”—and EA Sports was not champing at the bit to put Michigan’s drum major on the cover of its next marching-band video game.
If you bring it back to the simple question of keeping your fans happy, however, Brandon’s decision was as foolhardy as the CEO of Cracker Jack eliminating the prizes at the bottom of the boxes because, hey, you can’t eat them, and those things cost money. If there is one component of college football that distinguishes the irrational, romantic notions fans feel for their favorite sport from the streamlined sensibilities of the pro game, the marching band might be the best place to start. It is the prize at the bottom of the box.
Shortly after Bill Martin became athletic director in 2000, he commissioned a survey titled “Fans Speak Out on Game Day Experience,” by his good friend, Republican pollster Bob Teeter. The response rate alone told them how passionate Michigan fans were about their team. While most consumer surveys attract a 6 to 8 percent rate of return, fully 64 percent of the three thousand Michigan fans randomly selected responded—or about ten times the average.
When these season-ticket holders were asked to rank the importance of twenty-three aspects of the game-day experience, the survey readers weren’t too shocked to find seat location atop the list, with 88 percent of respondents ranking it “important.” But the marching band finished a close fourth, with 83 percent, two places ahead of the final score, and four ahead of the quality of the opponent. Thus, whether the Wolverines won or lost, or which team they were playing—in other words, the football game—was less important to the fans than seeing the marching band. After all, the band remained undefeated.
Brandon took some hits for his decision from fans, who flooded his e-mail account, but donors soon stepped up to cover half the $400,000 tab, leading some to believe the whole incident was a ruse to get someone else to pay the bill. But band director Scott Boerma wasn’t buying it. “I do not think he planned on the backlash,” Boerma told me, “nor do I think it was some clever way to get donors to pony up for it. Dave was genuinely surprised.”
After Brandon finally capitulated, he told the Detroit Economic Club in August that it was all a “misunderstanding,” akin to a “family squabble.” He said he had agreed from the outset to fund the $100,000 necessary for the band to take buses down to Dallas, allowing them to play concerts along the way.
“The band changed their mind,” Brandon said. “They decided they didn’t want to be in buses and they didn’t want to play their way to Dallas, and they came and said, ‘We’re planning on coming to Dallas, everybody’s planning on coming to Dallas, but we’re not going to ride in buses—we’re going to fly in a jumbo jet and here’s what it’s going to cost.’ ”
But band director Scott Boerma recalls the dialogue differently. “I think it’s important for people to know that we never ‘changed our mind.’ We never agreed to busing down and playing gigs along the way. We offered to look into that possibility, but when we did, we determined that it really wouldn’t be best for all concerned, especially because it would be the weekend before classes started, and we would lose several days of our pre-season rehearsals, when we prepare for the entire fall ahead. We never refused to bus down, as Brandon said. We were never given the opportunity to refuse anything, because there was no follow-up conversation.
“When it all hit the fan, I made sure that it wasn’t the band students and staff causing a commotion. We just laid low and waited for it all to work out. If the decision to not take the band down remained intact, we would have been fine with that. It was Brandon’s decision; he was paying the bills, and that’s his business.”
Of course, after the fans expressed their outrage over that decision, and the donors ponied up, the trip was on.
• • •
My friends back in Ann Arbor watched the game on TV, something seven of us have been doing together for almost two decades when the Wolverines are away. While our gang wouldn’t pass for a scientifically selected “focus group,” we’re probably pretty typical not only of Michigan fans, but of Big Ten fans in general. An anthropologist watching us would have little difficulty identifying our tribe and our shared rituals.
In our “gang of seven” (to which we’ve added spouses and kids), nine of our fourteen parents earned at least one degree from U-M, and five of them work there. Only one of us didn’t earn at least one degree from Michigan, and three of us have worked for U-M ourselves. We’ve also earned degrees from Kenyon College, Williams College, and the Universities of Georgia, Wisconsin, and Ohio State, so we have a few points of comparison. But for all of us, when it comes to sports, Michigan is where our loyalties lie.
It started before we were even aware of it. For me, it was the 1972 Rose Bowl, when the third-ranked Wolverines appeared to have a 12–10 victory locked up to secure an undefeated season, and a shot at a national title, only to see sixteenth-ranked Stanford connect on five straight passes, then kick a field goal to win 13–12. I was seven, in a house filled with adults and kids, and I remember everyone being very happy, then suddenly very unhappy. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew whatever it was, it must have been important.
The others in our gang were similarly indoctrinated, even those who went to grade school in Minnesota, Illinois, or Connecticut, because their parents had gone to Michigan or were from there, and they raised them that way.
Paul Barnett, aka Barney, was a high school hockey teammate of mine who is now a county prosecutor. He is the son of two U-M alums who both played in the marching band, and his dad still plays in the alumni band during homecoming weekends.
During Ohio State week, Barney and his fifth-grade buddies would go around their neighborhood with their cornets and trombones, ringing doorbells and playing “The Victors” and “Let’s Go Blue!”—Christmas carols for Wolverine fans.
“If we lost,” he recalled, “it would ruin my month. I still have bitter memories of certain games, like the loss to Purdue at Purdue in 1976, and the sixteen-to-nothing loss at Minnesota in 1977.” Because we’re all part of the same tribe, he didn’t need to add that Michigan had gone into both games ranked number one.
“I was connected to it. Michigan was us, and we were Michigan. All the kids in school felt the same way. There were no—no—Michigan State fans.”
Before we had given any thought to where we wanted to go to college, we already knew Michigan’s players, records, rivals, and traditions. We were hooked—and it didn’t have anything to do with what we knew about the school itself, which wasn’t much.
A few of our classmates would go on to play for Michigan, which is what happens when you grow up in Ann Arbor—or Columbus or State College or just about anywhere in Big Ten country. Unlike the NFL, in college football, the best players near you tend to go to the best program near you.
For us, that included Andy Moeller—whose dad, Michigan assistant coach Gary, would replace Schembechler in 1990—and Jim Harbaugh, whose dad, Jack, was also an assistant coach. Harbaugh, like Bob Seger, went to Tappan Junior High, named after U-M’s first president. In ninth grade, two members of our gang, Tim Petersen and Brian Weisman, comprised Harbaugh’s starting backfield.
Of course, Harbaugh went on to become Michigan’s Big Ten MVP quarterback, a star in the NFL, and then the head coach of Stanford and the San Francisco 49ers. Petersen and Weisman switched to tennis and soccer, respectively, which probably better fit their five-eight frames. If you stretched it, you could say they were eventually replaced by Walter Payton and Marshall Faulk. Well, sort of.
All of this comes up with remarkable regularity in our e-mails, ostensibly intended to plan a simple Saturday get-together. These e-mails should have nothing to do with anything
that happened thirty years ago—but they always seem to have everything to do with it. We had become Michigan fans long before we went to college. We have remained Michigan fans long after we graduated.
Rest assured, the same immersion method applies to kids who were raised on Penn State and Ohio State football, Indiana and Purdue basketball, and Wisconsin and Minnesota hockey. And that’s what makes the whole league work: whether we admit it or not, we want the other schools’ fans to be as passionate about their teams as we are about ours; otherwise, what’s the point? Where’s the fun in beating someone who doesn’t care about the game in the first place?
• • •
But this doesn’t mean we can’t be critical of our alma mater. In fact, probably no one is more critical of these schools than the alums. This became obvious over lunch the week after the Alabama game, when the gang recounted their “talking points” from the watch party that Saturday.
“The Cowboy Classic?” asked Brian Weisman, one of Harbaugh’s former junior high tailbacks. “It was a poor idea, poorly explained.”
“There’s no good reason for it,” Barney said. “And no good reason for leaving the band behind, either.”
“I don’t think it’s all about the bottom line with Brandon,” Weisman said, “but that’s always the first foot he puts forward, and it often doesn’t look or feel right with a public institution established for education first. It has a corporate feel to it. Tacky. With all the commercialism of the Cowboy Classic—the JumboTrons and the expensive tickets and the TV coverage—was it a college game or a pro game?”
“It was a pro game,” said Keith Severence, who had gone with a friend whose company was being entertained by Tyson’s Chicken and therefore got to sit in one of those fancy suites drinking gin and tonics and eating sushi. “It was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t college. And afterward, you had nowhere to go.” After all, Jerry World is surrounded by a massive parking lot—and little else.
Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football Page 15
