First Posted: 1/7/2015
Texans like to tell you, “Everything is big in Texas.”
That is certainly true with Cowboy Stadium, where Ohio State will play Oregon on Monday night in the first ever College Football Playoffs championship game. The facility opened in May 2009, and it is a stadium like no other.
The locals in the Dallas-Fort Worth area like to call it the “House that Jerry built,” “JerryWorld,” “Jones-Mahal” or the “Metroplex.” Jerry is Jerry Jones, the richer than rich owner of the Dallas Cowboys.
The locals also will tell you that Jerry made the stadium a convertible (it has a retractable roof) because God loves watching the Dallas Cowboys.
COWBOY STADIUM FACTS
Most expensive stadium ever
Originally estimated to cost $650 million, the stadium’s final construction cost was close to $1.3 billion, making it one of the most expensive sports venues ever built.
Jerry Jones and his family paid nearly $241 million of their own money toward the cost of the new stadium.
To assist them in paying the construction costs of the new stadium, Arlington voters approved an increase of the city’s sales tax by 0.5 percent, the hotel occupancy tax by 2 percent, and car rental tax by 5 percent.
How big is it?
• The stadium itself fills up 73 acres or 3 million square feet
• The length of Cowboys Stadium is 900 feet
Retractable roof
• A retractable roof was designed so the new stadium has the characteristic hole in the roof like the former Texas Stadium.
• The domed roof is the largest dome ever constructed for a sports stadium on the planet
• The arches, which reinforce the retractable roof, rise to 292 feet and each one is ¼ mile in length
Popular venue
• Cowboy Stadium hosted Superbowl XLV in 2011, the first ever for Dallas.
• The Cotton Bowl game was moved to the stadium in 2010
• This year’s college basketball Final Four was played in Cowboy Stadium
• It has hosted concerts by U2, George Strait and Paul McCartney.
Talk about HD-TV
• The stadium has the largest high definition video screen in the world. It measures 160 by 72 feet.
• The LCD screen was created by Mitsubishi’s Diamond Vision Systems
• Over 10.5 million light emitting diodes were used to create the display along with 30 million light bulbs
• The video screen weighs an astonishing 1.2 million pounds
• Guinness World Records awarded Mitsubishi Electric and the Dallas Cowboys the title of World’s largest High-Definition
Video Display.
• Some local sports stations in Dallas are referring to the screen as “The Screen Monster”
Take a seat
• The Dallas Cowboys new stadium has a seating capacity of 80,000 people for regular season games. For post-season games and special events the seating capacity is 100,000. The design of the seats for this stadium puts all of the seats on rails, they’re not bolted into the concrete.
• During the regular season, the seats are 22-inches wide. When more seats are required, those seats are removed and 18-inch seats are installed. There are six “party decks” on each level of the end zones for extra standing-room only crowds to gather.
