Texans usually rejoice in having the biggest and the best of everything, but it seems that they might finally have taken things too far. The big screens at the new home of the Dallas Cowboys are so huge that they are getting in the way of high-flying footballs.
Cowboys Stadium, an 80,000-seat facility in Arlington, Texas, which will host the Super Bowl in 2011, is regarded as a step forward in stadium design. But a flaw was detected during the Cowboys’ first appearance there, a 30-10 victory in a pre-season game over the Tennessee Titans on Friday evening.
A punt by A J Trapasso of the Titans in the third quarter of the game rebounded off the video display board, which hangs high above the field, but evidently not high enough. At 60 yards long and 71 feet high, the board is, in effect, the world’s largest high-definition television screen. But the bottom edge is only 90 feet above field level, which was not enough for Trapasso.
Trapasso and Craig Hentrich, another Titans punter, also hit the video board in pre-game warm-ups. “I hit it probably a dozen times in pregame,” Hentrich said. “Probably somewhere around a five-second punt is going to hit it and some of the guys in the league wouldn't be able to punt here if it's not raised; they'd just be nonstop hitting it. I don't know what the people were thinking. I guess they should have tested things out before they put that thing in place. It'll have to be raised.”
The height of the board above the field actually conforms to NFL specifications, with five feet to spare, but the league may yet order the Cowboys to make changes. The league’s competition committee has not yet scheduled a meeting to discuss the issue, but Jeff Fisher, the Titans head coach, who is also co-chairman of the committee, believes that it is a possibility. “Something has to get worked out,” he said. “It can become a problem.”
However, Jerry Jones, the Cowboys owner, is reluctant to add to the £1.5 billion already spent on the stadium – around twice the original estimate. He believes that the punt was an exceptional one and that no action is required. “How high is high if somebody just wants to sit there and kick straight up?” he said. “You gotta be trying to do it. The rule is very clear. You just kick it [again].”
On this occasion, though, the officials did not notice that the ball had struck the ball until until Fisher drew their attention to it, after which the clock was re-set and the snap of the ball replayed. “We have to discuss, from an officiating standpoint, that, as of now, no one is assigned to watch the flight of the ball,” Fisher said. “Who determines whether it hits the board or not?”
Other domed and retractable-roof stadiums can both have problems when staging games in which balls reach high altitudes. Tropicana Field, the home of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays, has four catwalks hanging from the ceiling, and ground rules have been established specifically to deal with the possibility of fly balls striking them. One is regarded as being in play, so that a ball that hits it can drop for a hit or be caught for an out. A second is partly in play, while the other two are out of play – although a ball that strikes them between the foul poles counts as a home run.
(Source: Timesonline.co.uk)
