Two men of similar backgrounds, separated by decades in time, but forever linked, shared the same dream.
Both were billionaires. Oil moguls.
Visionaries.
But neither was able to accomplish their original, grand plan. In attempting, both proved that when one shoots for the moon and misses, he may still land among the stars.
The men are Clint Murchison Jr. and Jerry Jones. One was the original owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and the other inherited a legacy built by the first, carrying the franchise into a new millennium while expanding its relevance, glamour and traditions.
There was a point during the ownership tenure of each when the men believed they could build a new home for their beloved team in the Fair Park area of Dallas, home of the historic Cotton Bowl. The old stadium had been the Cowboys' home from their first season, 1960, but by 1965, Murchison had plans to construct a new, semi-covered Cotton Bowl.
When those plans fell through, Murchison began considering the possibilities of a 55,000-seat facility in downtown Dallas, but again, it was not to be. By late June of 1967, Murchison decided local leaders, including Mayor Erik Jonsson wouldn't allow the project to get off the ground.
"I think the vast majority of people want a new stadium," Murchison said then. He would sell the Cowboys in 1984, and died three years later. "But the city leaders are not in favor of it. I do not have any hope that Dallas will build one."
Instead of sitting on his hands waiting for the city to move forward with alternate plans or a renovated Cotton Bowl, Murchison began secretly working on a new park in nearby Irving.
First he began buying up land on an 86-acre plot, using the Industrial Foundation of Irving as a front. The piece of land was encircled by three highways, and formed the shape of a teardrop. It would become the site of the stadium and its most prime parking lots, with other parking arrangements made outside the parcel.
Originally, Murchison's park was to have a more open feel, but plans for the end zone upper decks were added in September, 1968, boosting the seating by 10,000.
Some four months later, the planned stadium cleared its final hurdle, as Irving voters passed its proposal for the second time, and it was approved by the state's attorney general.
Murchison and Irving Mayor Robert Power were joined by then-Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith for the spade-turning ceremony on Jan. 25, 1969. A year later, the team had sold the rights to some 20,000 season tickets through bond purchases, much like today's personal seating licenses.
In his initial plans, Murchison had wanted a covering for the venue similar to many European soccer stadiums, which left the playing field open to the elements but protected fans from the weather. The stadium's architects, Warren Morey & Associates, studied numerous plans for a roof, including a three-section retractable roof. They eventually settled on the moon roof-style design that would serve as the building's most recognizable feature.
Plans were finalized and construction began, with delay upon delay, labor strike upon labor strike, forcing the team to push back the park's scheduled opening more than a year.
But boy was it worth the wait.
By October, 1971, Texas Stadium was completed. Midway through the season, the Cowboys moved into the NFL's swankiest new digs.
The stadium was bigger, bolder and nicer than anything Murchison had planned for Dallas or Fair Park. For years many Dallas residents regretted that the park hadn't been placed closer to the team's namesake city. There was a deluge of new stadiums opening around the league in the early 1970s, but none became as venerable and famous as the house with the hole in the roof. In the end, Murchison was steadfast that his Cowboys could settle for nothing but the finest home.
His stance proved profitable, and some 30 years later, history began to repeat itself.
Jerry Jones purchased the Cowboys in 1989, immediately inheriting not only one of the proudest franchises in sport, but the 65,000-seat stadium where they played, the legacy of the team's founder, Murchison.
"I can remember before we put any team on the field, before we signed our first free agent, I can remember just driving up to (Texas Stadium) at night and just sitting there in the car," Jones says. "And I really couldn't believe that I had gotten a chance to call the shots regarding what was happening there at that stadium and how symbolic it was of the team."
Early in Jones' ownership of the club, he began tinkering with the business dynamic that kept the team and stadium operating as separate entities, despite the fact they shared the same parent.
"The team and the stadium were not coordinated that well relative to the management," Jones says. "It really was a little bit of passion regarding the stadium.
Just the feel, and getting caught up in it and being proud of it - and you get proud of it when you pay what I paid for it. But it was a little bit of that, the energy that goes, 'Hey, this is all going to be one - the Cowboys, the stadium.'"
A decade or so after that first trip to see what he had just purchased, Jones began to think about the next step in Dallas Cowboys history, a new building worthy of replacing Texas Stadium, the team's backyard for all five of its Super Bowl wins.
"It's one of the things that leaves me a little hollow," Jones says. "I think about leaving Texas Stadium, because those feelings that I had when I first got to get involved in the NFL and got to get involved with the Dallas Cowboys, I just thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I just didn't want anything more. I couldn't think of anything else that I wanted to do other than be involved in the team and the extension of it through that stadium."
Like Murchison, Jones had designs for a huge stadium near downtown Dallas. By 2004, city planners diverted the plans to Fair Park, but the county commissioners decided the money just didn't add up.
Talks with the city and county stalled again, just as they had for Murchison, and like his predecessor, Jones realized he would need to look elsewhere if he was to get the stadium the team deserved. That place was Arlington, a bedroom community for both Dallas and Fort Worth.
Just as Murchison insisted with Texas Stadium before him, Jones' new $1.1 billion, three-million square-foot park is uniquely his, not the elaborate compromise a metro site would have ultimately become.
"A lot of that has driven what we've done (in Arlington) to expand the scope of this thing," Jones says. "When we initially were talking about this stadium at a different location, it was a two-million square-foot property that we were thinking about, and the dollars were $600-$700 million at that time."
But what a difference $500 million makes. For perspective, Murchison's stadium cost about $35 million. For its day, though, Texas Stadium was equally lauded as a magnet for all things chic and high-class in North Texas, and for the technological bells and whistles never previously imaginable for a mere football stadium.
But as Jones said recently when comparing his new stadium to a similarly Texas-sized venue down in Houston, the Dallas Cowboys have always been about glitz and glitter.
It's a tradition Jones carries on from his predecessor, Murchison. A dream each man brought to life.
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