Texans @ Chargers will be played in San Diego

Giggle all you want Jerry Jones has so tricked out his new stadium (particularly the 100,000 seating capacity) that it will be a long time before Houston gets another SuperBowl game. That baby promises to be state of the art as the price tag has topped $1 billion.

Also it's looking more likely that this game will be played in San Diego on Sunday or Monday night. Only about 5,000 evacuees are left at the Q and the evac order has been lifted.

 

Everything up there, with the possible exception of Fort Worth, counts as "Dallas" and is duly evicted from Texas.

It's even more appopriate that they, being Dallas and all, mess up the only thing they've done right in half a century (the Ballpark) by sitting that oozing concrete butt pimple right next to it. Awesome.

 

That thing looks like a melted version of Reliant Stadium.

 

see, i'd argue the ballpark was a mistake, too.

building an urban park in the middle of nowhere. not a great idea. no connection to a city landscape at all. houston's site for MMP...baltimore's site for Camden...Denver's site for Coors....that's getting it right.

and not putting a roof on it was flat out dumb. turns out it's hot up there.

 

Well there you have it. (When I went to the 'Park, it was in early fall; so the heat of the summer wasn't a factor. It was/is a beautiful, beautiful park. Also, I wouldn't exactly call Arlington the middle of nowhere--there is a very attractive business park just south of the ballpark, and the whole Six Flags thing is nearby as well. Perhaps the businesses sprung up after the park, but if so then it worked according to plan. Overall, at least ten years ago when I was last there, a very attractive area. But Dallas still sucks.)

 

Middle of nowhere relative to what you think about ballparks traditionally being surrounded by. Particularly ones built in that style. It is far and away the largest structure around it that's not a roller coaster. To me it just looks out of place. It's a stadium surrounded by a huge parking lot. Oh, and there's a hotel nearby.

 

I wonder if (and I do mean *wonder*, as in I don't know) some of the things "traditionally surrounding" the "ones built in that style" perhaps came afterward? As in the growth followed the venue?

 

It should. Jerry Jones looked at Reliant Stadium closely when he selected the design for the his new stadium. He set out to outdo Reliant Stadium at every turn. That's why he upped the seating count to 100,000 so he could be sure to be able to provide a bigger financial incentive (read $$$) to the NFL when they pick sites for future SuperBowls.

 

No doubt that happened. But that can't happen when you surround your ballpark with a huge parking lot.

The idea of a retro ballpark is to situate it in a neighborhood that develops character over time.

The Ballpark is exactly in the same situation the Astrodome was in. Drive to game. Park. Walk through parking lot. Leave game. Get in car. Drive home.

 

But I thought there was no rivalry? I thought Dallas barely knew Houston existed?

 

NOW I hear ya. I'll give you that.

 

Yeah but you can't do anything about the weather. It's just as hot in Houston as well plus you have to throw in the humidity factor. But I am in 100% agreement about the location. At least in Houston, you have the baseball & basketball stadiums in the central business district with the football stadium just to the outside of the CBD. Now that's how you do it. Up here, the baseball & football stadiums are located so far west, they are virtually unreachable for anyone in eastern part of Dallas county. In fact, it will be very interesting to how this all works out. The Cowboys' season ticket base is mostly in Dallas especially north Dallas. The new stadium is 30 miles away, just off the I-30 turnpike. There will be no rail, no mass transit. To get there one will need to drive at least 1 1/2 hours ONE WAY. This is shaping up to be a major clusterf**k.

 

At the time it was built, a roofed stadium was not too much of an option as they were going for the "retro" look made popular by Camden Yards in Baltimore. Actually it's not the heat that's a problem but the design. They put in a new club-restaurant that radically altered the airflow in the stadium which is why fly balls simply jet out of the stadium now. That was dumb...

 

thats what will hurt them in attracting superbowls

 

Looks good at night, though.

 

Yeah, I thought that too but it was explained to me that they will still be able to use venues in Dallas. For example, for the 2011 SuperBowl, they will use Dallas hotels and the Dallas Convention Center for pre SuperBowl activities (Comissioner's Party, Saturday night at the SuperBowl, etc.). All of the big super hotels in Dallas like the W, the Crescent, the Adolphus, the Mansion On Turtle Creek and the Anatole will be booked up solid and they plan to use buses to ferry folks out to Arlington. Going forward, there are plans to build 2 new luxury hotels in the vicinity of the new stadium so hotel availability won't be a factor.

 

^^^
People will have had their fill of Dallas after one superbowl of cold, commuting and being spreadout.

 

Again I don't think so. It's roughly the same situation in Phoenix sans the cold. The new University of Phoenix stadium is in Glendale while everything else is downtown. Being spreadout doesn't appear to be all that big a deal to the NFL because they know that people will come to the game no matter what.

 

My sources* tell me that the game will most likely be held on Sunday in San Diego as originally scheduled.







*

Spoiler

my source