DRY RUN

NBA All-Star Weekend serves as one of the region’s dress rehearsals for XLV

By Mickey Spagnola

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 1:00am

BIG EVENT HOST: Cowboys Stadium is the new site of the Cotton Bowl Classic.

Next year might be the first Super Bowl ever to be played in North Texas. But the goal is for Super Bowl XLV (to be played at Cowboys Stadium on Feb. 6, 2011, in Arlington, Tex.) not be the last to be played in the region.

And that is the approach the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee has been taking ever since being awarded the game on May 22, 2007, in Nashville. Getting the Super Bowl is one thing. Remaining in the NFL’s Super Bowl rotation is entirely another.

And to do that, the city or region must be a great host. To do that, the city or region must put on a great show. To do that, the stadium must be a grand slam.

Cowboys Stadium has been practicing. A variety of big events already having taken place in its first year, including a U2 concert, the Cotton Bowl Classic, a college basketball game between North Carolina and Texas and an NFC Wild-Card round playoff game so far.

But maybe the biggest Super Bowl warmup happens this February: The 2010 NBA All-Star Game, truly a global extravaganza bringing big-event atmosphere and world-wide attention to Cowboys Stadium.

“Any event we’re having right now is a learning curve,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said of operating his $1.2 billion stadium. “That stadium ought to be better operating after an event like the NBA All-Star Game than it was six months ago. And it is critical to have that, just from that standpoint.

“And the other thing it does, it gives the different staffs we have, between the volunteers staffing something like the NBA or staffing something like the New York Giants ballgame. There will be 70,000 people in the building, and those aren’t our employees for the large part.”

The 2010 NBA All-Star Game will be played on Sunday, Feb. 14, with the Dallas Mavericks and the NBA serving as hosts for what will be a four-day festival spread out between the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas to Arlington, where all will culminate in the playing of the 59th All-Star Game at Cowboys Stadium.

With more than 80,000 expected to attend the game, and so much activity taking place during the four-day event, certainly those running Cowboys Stadium will get a taste of what it will be like to hold a Super Bowl, which once seemed so far off, but is now right around the corner.

There are so many facets, other than the actual game, that must be attended to, including turning your brand-spanking-new stadium over to another party, the NBA staff running their own All-Star game just as the NFL runs the Super Bowl. Also, in these international type events, unlike a regular-season NFL game, it’s not just the media from the North Texas area and the visiting team’s city covering the event. The vast majority of the media covering the NBA All-Star Game will be visiting media, just like the Super Bowl.

Same with taking care of the fans, the majority coming in from out of town, having very little familiarity with Cowboys Stadium, sort of what Cowboys Stadium experienced in early January with the first Cotton Bowl game. And certainly that is exactly what happens for a Super Bowl. The s small percentage of what’s expected to be a crowd reaching 100,000 will actually live in the North Texas area.

And there are all the activities on the surrounding stadium grounds taking place that must be facilitated, those corporate functions normally housed in tent-like structures taking up huge amounts of space in close proximity to the stadium. Not to mention continuing to refine your parking and traffic control.

“This will be the first truly international event we’ve had,” said Brett Daniels, Cowboys Stadium spokesman. “There are players from all over the world participating in the All-Star Game.”

Plus, if you put on a shindig, you sure want to be polished.

“So my point is every one of those events help us all learn how to coordinate the event and do a better job,” Jones said. “And by the way, that’s why you can’t have a Super Bowl in (a new stadium) until you’ve operated it for at least a year. And we’ve had more big events as any stadium that’s been opened.”

The NFL does not allow a new stadium to play host to a Super Bowl without being operational for a minimum of two full seasons. In other words, it’s mandatory for a stadium to have gone through one full NFL season, as the Cowboys have done in 2009, before playing host to a Super Bowl at the conclusion of the following season (2010).

By the time next February arrives, 
Cowboys Stadium will have gone through two NFL seasons, two Cotton Bowls, at least one NFL playoff game, several major concerts, NCAA football and basketball games, a major boxing event, a professional bull riding event, a monster truck event and motocross racing — just to name a few.

So if practice makes perfect?

Jones, the Cowboys and the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee are well aware receiving this first Super Bowl was not a slam dunk, barely edging out Glendale, Ariz., and Indianapolis for the 2011 affair. So performance will decide if another Super Bowl makes its way to North Texas in the coming years, which is the ultimate goal.

“What’s happening is the brand of our building is becoming associated with big-time events — Super Bowl, Final Four, NBA All-Star, world-class boxing, 38,000 people for a college basketball game, and they are all unique in their own nature,” says Chad Estis, vice president of brands and sales at Cowboys Stadium. “But the more experience we get at running major events and seeing the different things our building can do, the better we’ll be prepared for the big one…

“Which is that Super Bowl.”