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October 14, 2007

Texas Tales

IRVING, Texas -- Does it strike anyone else as at least mildly amusing that America's Team plays, not in Dallas -- the fabled "Big D" -- but in Irving?
Irving?
What, there was no land available to build a stadium in Earl? Or Marvin?
You have to know that there is no way there ever would have been a wildly-popular, prime-time TV drama entitled "Irving." And, surely, J.R. Ewing would have shot himself before living in Irving.
I'm showing my age now, but the first game I covered here was the final one of the 1976 season. I was working in Richmond, VA, then, and was sent to Dallas to see the Redskins play the Cowboys. Tom Landry was coaching the Cowboys then, and Roger Staubach was the QB. Dallas was 11-2 at the time, but the Redskins, with Billy Kilmer at QB, and coached by George Allen, pulled off a 27-14 upset that put them in the playoffs.
To digress for a moment . . . that playoff game was the following weekend, at Minnesota. The Vikings won, after which I went to my hotel, within walking distance of the old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington (also the home of the Twins, that stadium has since been torn down and the massive Mall of America has been built on the site) and watched the second half of the Patriots playoff game in Oakland. That was the game in which referee Ben Dreith called the infamous, roughing-the-passer penalty on Ray "Sugar Bear" Hamilton that set up the game-winning TD by the Raiders.
Getting back to Dallas . . .
The Patriots actually played the first game ever in Texas Stadium. That was on Oct. 24, 1971, and the Cowboys, not surprisingly, won, 44-21.
The first time I came here with the Pats was on Thanksgiving Day, 1984, when, even though Craig James -- who played his college football in Dallas, teaming with Eric Dickerson in SMU's ``Pony Express" backfield -- rushed for 112 yards on 19 carries, the Cowboys prevailed, 20-17.
Although James had played for Ron Meyer at SMU, it wasn't until Meyer was fired midway through the '84 season, and Raymond Berry took over, that James became the Patriots' featured ballcarrier. The following year, James rushed for 1,227 yards on 263 carries as the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl for the first time.
In the 1996 game the Pats played here -- a 12-6 Cowboys victory -- the most memorable play came when then-rookie kicker Adam Vinatieri ran down Herschel Walker to prevent him from returning a kickoff for a touchdown.
This will the last game the Patriots play here. The Cowboys will move into a state-of-the-art stadium, with a retractable roof, in Arlington for the 2009 season. Super Bowl XLV is scheduled to be played there on Feb. 6, 2011.

Posted by Jim Donaldson  at 3:07 PM | Permalink