This week's Sports Illustrated has a story about "The King of Texas" -- who is, like you didn't already know, Dallas Cowboys "wildcat" owner Jerry Jones. Actually, it's about his billion-dollar bid for football immortality in Arlington, because writer Richard Hoffer sure does seem to be in love with a construction site, some blueprints and the promise of "the latest, possibly the greatest, edifice to be constructed for the people's entertainment in this great land of ours, maybe the final frontier in sports-related architecture." My virtual sports pages are sticking together.
Jerry's an "adder-onner," he says, paying for everything in the Ginormodome out of pocket, save for the mere $325 mil for which Arlington's on the hook. (All together now: Suck it, Dallas County commissioners and former Mayor Laura Miller and the Dallas city council and all you other bastards who killed Fair Park forever and ever by letting Jerry go to Arlington. There, feel better?) And do you know why yer getting those 60-yard-wide flat-screens hanging over the field? Celine Dion. No kiddin'.
He got the idea for his giant screens while watching a Celine Dion show at Caesars Palace. He was visually discombobulated by the screens behind her, redundant to the Canadian songbird's performance, but mesmerized all the same. "You didn't know what you were seeing," he says, "but you knew it must have been good."Actually, the best part of the story's where Hoffer details Jones' Hall of Fame party at the Ghostbar for Michael Irvin -- where "four cheerleaders danced go-go style." Like that doesn't happen every day at Jerry's house. --Robert Wilonsky
