Cowboys Stadium: It's Bruton-like

By DAVID GREEN

Two thoughts came to mind as I watched the Dallas Cowboys play the past two weekends in team owner Jerry Jones' new stadium in Arlington, Texas.

1: The size and lavishness of this place defies belief, even as viewed on television.

2: Don't you know Bruton Smith wants an oval racing facility just like it, complete with retractable roof?

I mean, there are big facilities and fancy facilities and there are big and fancy facilities, but they all look like a small-town sandlot ball field in comparison. It's like the Titanic compared to an Ohio River tugboat. Nothing wrong with the sandlot diamond or the diesel-snorting tug, but, come on. This thing has a high-definition television complex suspended from its roof that weighs more than Lambeau Field, six inches of turf and two rows of the parking lot included.

And Bruton could do it, too, if he put his mind to it. Many of the features of this extravaganza are tailor-made for an indoor auto racing track, from the trick roof to the six-story-tall glass portals at each end of the stadium which can be opened or closed at will.

Size matters, you say? Yes, it does. We may still be a few decades away from developing the materials and the engineering to build a facility big enough to enclose something as large as Bruton's Texas Motor Speedway, just a little bit north and west of Arlington.

But, hey -- don't we have enough 1.5-mile tracks? Didn't I read somebody's complaint about that one or two times in the past couple of years? Let's build one like the new Iowa Speedway, or maybe Richmond -- maybe as big as Rockingham. You can't convince me that couldn't be done.

And what a wonder it would be. Just think of it. It would be a modern-day version of the Pyramids, or the Colossus of Rhodes.

NASCAR might even give Bruton a date for that one.