Yes, my loyalty still lies with baseball, but I wanted to throw this in here due to the magnitude of this event. Before Sunday, the highest number of page views on my site was 22. Yesterday it hiked up to 115 and Monday’s ended at 183. The vast majority of this is because of people searching “cowboys stadium” or “new cowboys stadium.” So this stadium has quite a bit more hype than anything baseball related. (Hopefully more people will turn to baseball next month during the playoffs.)
This article isn’t going to focus much on the analysis or stats of the game. It will focus more on my thoughts of the stadium itself and my personal experience there.
Well, it was my 1st NFL game on Sunday night, and it was a doozy. The attendance was 105,121, breaking the previous record for a regular season NFL game of 103,467 fans between Arizona and San Francisco in Mexico City at Estadio Azteca in 2005. There were 30,000 fans in the party pass areas at each end zone. I was one of those 30,000. This is kind of funny. My roommate went with us and is a Giants fan. He estimated there would be between 20 and 30 thousand Giants fans being there, a very generous estimate. That would be a 1 in 5 ratio for Giants fans. When we actually got there, I would say it was more like 1 in 50 or even 1 in 100. They stuck out like a sore thumb.
There were 8 of us that went. When we made it to Cowboys Stadium I think the best word to describe it is “glorious“. It gave me an extra pump of adrenaline through my veins just to drive by the massive, gorgeous stadium and see all the people flocking to it and gathering around it. What a sight. The game started at 7:30, but we got into the Rangers cash lot F at around 1:30 and only paid 12 bucks. The lot attendant said if we would have got there at a half hour later we would have had to pay 40 bucks instead. That was a pleasant surprise b/c we were expecting to dish out more for parking, anywhere from $50 to $90. when we got there, we set up the beer pong table which got a few amused looks from people walking by. We had a group of guys beside us, but our tailgating area was a little desolate.
After beer pong, throwing the football around, and cooking our sausages and hot dogs, at about 4 we left for my uncle’s spot which was in the Silver Lot 4, which was a much better tailgating environment. There must have been 30 or so people in our group, a good party atmosphere, not to mention me getting to see some of my family again. At this point our group split and we never completely rejoined again until after the game. Half went inside to walk around and check out the stadium, I was with the half that stayed at the tailgating scene until about 6 or so and then went into the stadium. Apparently once you go into the stadium with a party pass, you can’t come out, which they didn’t know. So in retrospect, our situation was better b/c they didn’t gain any sort of seating advantage over us. We were able to find them and stand right next to them.
I would definitely recommend going to a game at the stadium. However, the party pass—not going to do it again. First, they are standing room only tickets so there is no sitting down, but we already expected that. However, standing room on the rail is limited and you risk having to watch the entire game on a tv screen, which I can do at my house or at any bar. The second half I lucked out though and got a spot on the rail with a beautiful view of the field (see below). Unfortunately there were a few Giants fans in front of me who were talking smack back and forth to the Cowboys fans beside me, so when the Giants fans stood up my view was almost ruined, and then on top of that one of them would hold his arms up like an idiot just so we couldn’t see the game.
The game itself. Yeah, a heartbreaker. Giants win 33-31 on a last second field goal. It was hard to swallow. Seeing so many people have their hopes crushed. But, the atmosphere was amazing. It got awesomely loud, especially when the Boys went up 31-30. I’m glad it was at least a good game. Seeing the Giants blow us out would have been a huge dissapointment.
It doesn’t matter which sport, there are some people you want to watch a game with and there are some people you don’t want to watch a game with, and it doesn’t matter if they’re for your team or the opposing team. There were fights. I guess that’s to be expected with so many people there. There are going to be some disrespectful, arrogant, obnoxious fans that are looking to butt heads. (Unfortunately one was among our group, but we left him on his own and found different spots after the 1st quarter. The game was much more enjoyable without his company.) 28 people were ejected, 8 arrested. Stupid fights. I hate to see people have so much disrespect for the game of football and for other people. Some people don’t know where to draw the line so the police have to draw it for them. (Or they actually have friends to calm them down or step in.)
Here are a few pics I took with my phone. They are in chronological order, and as can be expected, I got a better view as the game progressed:
The 1st view we got after walking in. As you can see, there are about 8 people between us and the the rail so we were forced to watch the smaller big screen tv.
I took this picture on one of the stairways. My phone got a better view than I had.
Midway through the 3rd quarter. On the same level as the first picture, we’re just closer and to the right some. Unfortunately you couldn’t see the open roof from here. Good view though.
Finally made it to the rail! As good of a view I got all game. The people directly in front of us paid for actual tickets instead of our $29 party passes. I have no idea how much theirs cost, but I have a feeling the difference in price was huge.
