THE UNITED NATIONS 
OF NORTH TEXAS

The North Texas Commission is working to ensure that the region’s first Super Bowl won’t be its last

By Hy Cotten

Thursday, July 29, 2010 - 11:34am

Dan Petty and the North Texas Commission will have their fingerprints all over the first Super Bowl XLV football that soars through the Cowboys Stadium air come February 2011.

All along, Petty has helped guide the flight of the North Texas Super Bowl efforts. But come game day? He will not just be looking back on a dream come true.

“When the kickoff happens in 2011, for me it’s going to be exactly that — a kickoff,” Petty said. “It’s a start. A beginning. To me, we’ve got opportunity after opportunity ahead of us. And I’m looking forward to working with our teammates to make it all happen.”

The North Texas Commission’s vision does not merely fall upon the world of sports. But in sports alone, Dan Petty wants more Super Bowls, more NBA All-Star Games, more college basketball Final Fours and World Cup Soccer events for North Texas.

Founded all the way back in 1971 primarily to promote the unveiling of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the North Texas Commission has been an integral player in North Texas’ major events. The commission waves the great flag of advocacy at the state legislature in the areas of transportation, long-range water supplies, clean-air programs and much more.

Tara Green, Vice President & COO of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee, refers to the North Texas Commission as “the United Nations of 
North Texas.”

“They bring the region together,” she 
said. “They are a great model for regional cooperation.”

Petty has been involved with the commission for 15 years, since it helped bring World Cup Soccer to the Cotton Bowl in 1994. He has devoted his career to public management, as Assistant City Manager of the City of Dallas, President of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, and as a prime player on the Governor’s staff in Austin.

Today, he’s also on the Board of Directors of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee.

“Dan and his entire staff were extremely instrumental in pulling the Super Bowl bid together,” Green said. “And they serve in that same role now bidding on the Men’s Final Four (NCAA basketball tournament).”

In November 2006, Petty was among a small group invited to huddle with Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jones’ family, and the mayors of Arlington, Dallas and Fort Worth. That’s when Jones first alerted them that North Texas, thanks to the new stadium being built in Arlington, had a shot at the 2011 Super Bowl.

The North Texas Commission immediately began to serve as a facilitator for the Super Bowl planning. Many of the same players had been involved in the region’s effort to land the 2012 Summer Olympics, a bid that failed, yet pulled North Texans together for this one.

In a separate move, Green took a leave of absence from her duties with the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau. The North Texas Commission provided Green and her assistant, Carly Christopher, office space in its Irving offices near DFW Airport.

“Tara was sort of the glue, I guess you could say, for the process,” Petty said.

Also instrumental were Dennis Graham, of the Winsted law firm, several local convention & visitors bureaus, and Dallas real estate investor George Bayoud. While Roger Staubach served as chair of North Texas’ Super Bowl bid committee, Bayoud was president. Petty and Robert Dale Morgan, an outside consultant who helped lead successful Super Bowl bid efforts in Atlanta and Houston, provided expertise.

Besides Jerry Jones, five presenters stepped up when the North Texas bid was formally discussed at the NFL owners’ meeting in Nashville: Charlotte Anderson, Cowboys vice president; Rosie Moncrief, wife of Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief; Bayoud, Staubach and Petty.

Once that huge success was achieved, Petty began looking at other possibilities. He has always supported a North Texas Sports Commission that would strive year-round to lure events.

“We have one on paper, but it’s not active,” Petty said. “Everyone who has been involved in both the Olympic bid and the Super Bowl bid — and now everyone working on the Final Four bid — sees a need for a North Texas Sports Commission.

“After the Super Bowl game in 2011, I think it’s our objective to get everybody together and hammer out a blueprint for a more permanent arrangement to go after major sporting events for the region.”

Petty did, in fact, make office space a few years ago for Troy Mathieu, the lone employee of the first Regional Sports Commission and now athletic director of the Grand Prairie Independent School District.

Now Petty would like a permanent group in place.

“Our region has such a good menu of facilities and venues for major sporting events that we ought to be a little more organized and a little more strategic in how we bring events here,” Petty said.

He would know. And when that first football flies on Super Bowl Sunday, it’ll be a joy for so many to see.

That’s also when another starter’s gun will go off in Dan Petty’s head.