OURS IS BIGGER

The big board at Cowboys Stadium is unlike anything anyone has ever seen

By Mickey Spagnola

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 1:00am

One of the more popular T-shirts selling in the Cowboys Stadium Pro Shop has the slogan Ours Is Bigger emblazoned across the front.

That’s in reference to the three-million square-foot Cowboys Stadium, the world’s largest stadium of its kind with a retractable roof.

But the reference could very well be referring to the $1.2 billion stadium’s center-hung video board that is much more than the national conversation piece it turned into when a preseason-game punt punked this Mitsubishi Electronics innovation hanging just 90 feet over the middle of the playing surface.

Now at first blush, most pass off the 160 x 72-foot Monster Vision that stretches from one 20-yard line to the other, and also includes separate video boards at each end of the 1.2 million-pound wonder, as just another example of Texas excess.

Or, they roll their eyes, knowing Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has a propensity for one-upmanship when it comes to anything and everything he does with the Dallas Cowboys he’s now owned for 20 years.

But in all actuality, the immense size of the HD video board, with vivid movie theater quality, had more to do with “the relative size of the board to the space” it would seemingly float in, Jones said the other day when talking about his pet project that would cost as much as it did to build the $40 million Texas Stadium back in 1971.

And the proportions of the board were born out of a cardboard mockup, that could be stretched out to show if the width of the board ended up this big, then the depth would have to expand this deep so they could meet their 16:9 ratio for the highest-rated broadcast quality.

“But there was no way to know,” Jones said of how the size of the board would impact the space of the stadium. “Normal-sized boards looked like a postage stamp because we always knew it was going to be center-hung.”

Jones came to that conclusion several years ago, and maybe fittingly while in Las Vegas, a city of excess itself, attending a Celine Dion concert. When the widely popular pop singer emerged on stage, a gigantic video board served as her entire backdrop, Jones remembers, stretching out across the width of the stage.

“At the end of the performance it was as impressive as anything I’ve ever seen,” Jones said. “I was not sure if I had seen Celine or the video board behind her.”

That set this immense project in motion, the Cowboys deciding in a meeting following the 2007 season opener against the New York Giants, that Mitsubishi Electronics would be selected to construct what would become the largest video board in any stadium.

So Jones and Cowboys officials began traveling around the country to inspect the best video boards at athletic venues they could find, going to such places at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field, to the University of Texas and Texas A&M University, Atlanta’s Turner Field, Auburn University — “every stadium we could find,” Jones said, that had huge video boards with unmatched clarity.

The where part of the equation — meaning where the video board would be located — never was open for discussion. Jones and the HKS designers always knew they would be hanging a video board of some sort over the middle of the field from the cross trusses attached to the two quarter-mile steel arches stretched across the length of the stadium that supported the retractable roof.

Again, how big would be big enough and could big ever be too big?

To gain some perspective, the designers hung netting from the arches at Texas Stadium to simulate the board, gaining a better feel for just how big the board would need to be to do justice to the space it would be in. And at training camp at the Alamodome in San Antonio the summer of ’07, with stadium construction already under way, the Cowboys experimented with the height of the board, asking punter Mat McBriar after practice one day to try to hit the center-hung scoreboard in that stadium. Stadium officials there had the ability to raise and lower the board, and that helped designers to settle on the bottom of the video board resting 90 feet off the playing surface.

“So at the end of the day we really had to make a calculated guesstimate on how the board would impact the space,” Jones said, and he added, “how it all would be directly proportionate to cost.”

But at the end of the day, there could be no trial and error. Once Mitsubishi built the board, that was the board. No do-overs here. And there was no testing of the board, either, since the entire 25,000 square feet of display area was built piece by piece once the frame was hung at Cowboys Stadium.

“There was so much apprehension about it before we actually got it hung,” Jones said. “There was no bluebook here, no reference book.”

No pre-hanging preview of the finished product on the ground.

There were two more qualities Jones insisted on: Whatever was shown on the video boards during the game would be real-time, a real headache that had to be overcome. He didn’t spend all that money, including another $6.5 million for cameras and a control room, for an oversized replay board. Whatever was taking place on the field, that’s exactly what Jones wanted on his four-screen rectangular board. And that also meant fans on each sideline side of the field would see the video on the board going in the same direction the game was going on the field — meaning a separate feed for each side.

And, this was not to be part video board, part billboard filled with ads. Nope, just the simple Mitsubishi Electronics sign that eventually was moved from the bottom of the screens to the top, which by the way, if you were measuring that height by building standards, well it would be the equivalent of a 10-story building. This was to be an unmatched experience.

So as the finished product might suggest once you’ve seen it, Jones got everything he asked for while sparing no expense to do so.

And the Cowboys owner will never forget when all the pixels finally had been put in place and the board first became operational, about the time the Cowboys were going through their OTA workouts and minicamp in the spring of 2009. The TV department had filmed those practices with their HD cameras and the intricate control room was ready to go.

Up went the practice video on the boards for the first time, the clarity so sharp, you could count the dimples on the leather football; could see the sweat running down the cheeks of quarterback Tony Romo’s face; and facial stubble, please, might as well have been standing in front of one of those lighted, magnified makeup mirrors.

“Thrilled, thrilled,” is all Jones can say after watching the finished product at work following the two home preseason games and the first two home regular-season games. “We’re completely satisfied we made the right decisions relative to size and how it fits into the space.

“It’s dynamic and significant enough, but does not negatively impact the stadium.”

And his reaction to the first time the board was turned on, when he saw footage of that practice?

“I’d liked to have cried,” Jones said in all sincerity, “and I might have teared-up there. Beyond anything I could have imagined.”

And when it comes to Jerry Jones, that’s really big.