August 23, 2009

Cowboys' scoreboard is a punt hazard

There have been plenty of articles about the first Dallas Cowboys preseason game at Cowboys Stadium, but what do I want to talk about? The fact that the new $25 million video screen was hung so low it's getting hit by punts. The NFL is apparently going to have to make new rules to account for this, and Cowboys tour guides were telling visitors on Saturday that the board was being raised, though team officials denied this.

What was behind this screwup? No one's saying, but it couldn't have hurt that the video board appears to be the main attraction both for those in the luxury suites and those in the standing-room-only sections on the same level. One fan told the Dallas Morning News on Friday night: "I catch myself watching that screen instead of watching the field. They zoom in on the bench and you can see sweat running down the back of the players' necks and you can see the expression on their faces. It just draws you in." Maybe the Cowboys could just skip the game itself and have computer players play the game on the big screen — that way they'd both save on player salaries and could just avoid scoreboard-colliding punts by adding a few lines of code.