During the telecast of Sunday night's Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants football game from the new, luxuriously swank Cowboys Stadium, one of the pressing questions, at least in NBC's view, would be if the game would sell over 100,000 seats, which it did. The attendance was 105,000 and change, breaking the existing American record set back in 1957 at the Coliseum in a game between the Rams and 49ers that was attended by over 100,000 fans.
Al Michaels saw the old record and said that it was "garbage" to think that Los Angeles couldn't support an NFL franchise again. It's hard to believe that a city of over 8 million people wouldn't want the Rams or even the Raiders back, or a team of their caliber, but one big problem is there is no Jerry Jones, the Cowboys' owner, in Southern California.
Jones is the driving force that brought the Dallas stadium to life. The NFL is not going to give Los Angeles the money to build a similar one here. The Coliseum, even remodeled, and the Rose Bowl are considered too old. There are only a handful of people in L.A. who have the money to finance a new stadium but so far it's been all talk, especially by the City Council and the mayor, but no action, or as they say in Jones' Texas, "big hat, no cattle."
Given the current political and rhetorical climate, it will be some time, if ever, before the NFL returns to Los Angeles soil.
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add NBC: Cris Collinsworth is a refreshing replacement for John Madden on the Sunday night game. Seeing the aging Madden sitting next to former President Bush in the first quarter, you have to wonder if NBC didn't coax him into retirement. Bush looked 20 years younger. Collinsworth's work with Michaels fits like a hand into a smooth glove. The two sound like they've been at it together for years. He makes the Sunday night game the best one, college or pro, on TV.
add TV commentators: Is it just me or did anyone else raise their eyebrows last night during the Monday night football telecast of the Dolphins-Colts game on ESPN when new color analyst Jon Gruden called one of the Dolphins' black players "cat"?
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