OPEN FOR BUSINESS

The ribbon to the new Cowboys Stadium — home to America’s Team and Super Bowl XLV — is officially cut.

By STEVE PATE

Thursday, July 29, 2010 - 11:09am

ARLINGTON — They snipped the ribbon on the next Wonder of the World Wednesday afternoon — Cowboys Stadium, Sunday home to America’s Team, and the 2011 big house for the first-ever Super Bowl in North Texas history.

She might not have been decked out in all of her jewelry and trappings just yet. Construction is ongoing. But this, as they say in the movie business, was a preview of things to come. And the architectural beauty of the place, as well as the fan-friendly confines with the huge scoreboards, promises to add a flavor to Super Bowl XLV unlike any seen from the previous 44 Super Bowls that will have been played before XLV.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck cut the ribbon at 3:37 p.m. on one of the outside plaza areas as 1,500 looked on.

The Honorable Cluck called his city’s billion-dollar baby “bigger and more beautiful than I ever imagined.”

And Jones, who has had this vision for 10 years, cited just how remarkable the achievement is considering the difficult economic times.

“We have a venue here that will be talked about for a long time,” Jones said. He later added, “Sports has long had a reputation for where people go for a respite, where they go to get away from it …

“I hope the legacy is, like my dad used to say, ‘That thing was built in the heart of the Depression. That thing was built when men had to be men; women had to be women. That was hard to do.’ I hope that the legacy of this stadium and the pride in the stadium and what we’ve done here lives to be a part of that kind of reflection 15, 20, 30 years from now.”

This was not Bill Lively’s first glimpse of the stadium. The President & CEO of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee, said, “I’ve watched this thing come out of the ground, and it has always impressed me as a 21st Century, Supersonic Texas Stadium. It has some of the same coloration; it has a hole in the roof. But that’s where it stops. Everything else is just 21st Century big — huge.”

Huge, as well, through the eyes of Ring of Honor inductee Cliff Harris, the Cowboys’ dynamic hitting machine at safety from 1970-79. The Cowboys moved from the storied Cotton Bowl at Dallas’ Fair Park to Irving’s Texas Stadium during Harris’ second season in the league.

From just inside the stadium looking out over the field, Harris said, “The dynamics, the size and structure of this, I think on a proportionate level, is a lot more dramatic than going from the Cotton Bowl to Texas Stadium, I think it’ll have a dramatic impact.”

Harris pointed out the closeness of the fans, and how the seating at Texas Stadium falls back more rapidly from the field, removing the crowd a little more. In the new stadium, the crowd on every tier will be practically hovering over the playing field.

“It’s going to be just as overwhelming for the players coming into this stadium as it was for the players who first came into Texas Stadium,” Harris said.

Texas Stadium cost a mere $35 million to build. Gil Brandt, the great player personnel director of the Cowboys for the franchise’s first 29 years, stood outside the new big house and said, “The scoreboard in this place cost more than Texas Stadium.”

Wait’ll the Super Bowl hits town. This place is not just gonna rock. It’s gonna roll.