No Historic ‘Home Game’ For Dallas Super Bowl

Added on Nov 23, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

Super Bowl

The Dallas Cowboys’ underacheiving season has been a disaster in any context, but making it even worse for the organization is the high hopes prior to the season that the team would be a Super Bowl contender. That’s the goal of every team in every NFL season, of course, but it would have had special significance had the Cowboys made the Super Bowl as they would have become the first team to play the game in their home stadium.

Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones had two objectives in landing the Super Bowl for Dallas–he wanted to show off his new state of the art Cowboys Stadium and he wanted his team to be the first to ever play the game on their home field. He never came out and *said* that was his goal for the 2010 season, but he sure implied it strongly before the season with quotes like this:

“I’m like a kid when you ask me what I want for Christmas. I want it so bad I’m scared to talk about it.”

Of course that was before the downward spiral, Tony Romo’s injury and the firing of Wade Phillips. The Cowboys are playing better under interim coach Jason Garrett, but it would take a monumental set of circumstances for the 4-7 team to even make the playoffs. The 2012 game will be played at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, giving the Colts a shot at making NFL history.
A few teams have come close to playing a Super Bowl game on their home field. In 1985, the San Francisco 49ers played the game at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, California–just 29 miles from their home field at Candlestick Park. The Los Angeles Rams came even closer in 1980, playing in the Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California just 15 miles from their home venue at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

There’s an old saying that ‘records were meant to be broken’ and the ‘no home field Super Bowl’ will likely change sooner rather than later. The NFL has a new emphasis on awarding the game to venues that host teams, which wasn’t always the case in the past. Should the Colts not do it next year it’ll be up to the New Orleans Saints in 2013 or the New York Jets and Giants in 2014.