Jerry Jones championed the construction of Jerry World — AT&T Stadium — to host major sporting events far and wide, not simply for eight or nine Dallas Cowboys home games per year. His building hosted a Super Bowl in 2011 but weather problems in the Metroplex made that one a miserable experience. Now an NBA game between the Washington Wizards and Detroit Pistons has been affected by weather in that region, which will go further towards making his beautiful facility a less-than-ideal location for the big game.
The Pistons lost to the Dallas Mavericks 105-111 on Monday, and are still stuck in Dallas. An ice storm has forced thousands of cancellations at both Dallas/Fort Worth and Dallas Love Field airports, and residents are being advised to stay off of the roads. With it not being safe for the Pistons to travel back home to Detroit, the NBA announced that their Wednesday night matchup against the Washington Wizards will be postponed.
This is not the first time an NBA game has been moved due to weather. A Wizards game was postponed in 2016 due to a winter storm.
Still, as ugly as winter weather can be, it is uncommon for NBA, and even major college basketball, to postpone games due to weather or other water issues. During the legendary 2010 Snowmageddon that dumped up to three feet of snow in the Washington Area, Scottie Reynolds took the subway from the Villanova’s hotel to Georgetown’s home arena. In 1994, pyrotechnics caused fire-fighting water cannons to drench the Alamodome in water. The arena was ready for the game to tip off 50 minutes later.
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Bad weather didn’t force a kickoff delay the night Aaron Rodgers won his only Super Bowl Championship in Arlington, Texas, but that week was a misery for everyone who was in town. Falling ice from the stadium roof injured construction workers. The weather affected events in town, and also customers who paid Super Bowl prices to be in the stadium for the game.
Temporary seats were put in place to sell more tickets for the game. Due to the icy conditions, the installation of those seats was put behind schedule. The job wasn’t finished until game day, which didn’t allow the fire marshalls enough time to inspect them. Those seats were deemed unsafe, and 1,250 people had to be relocated. Per an NFL statement, there were 400 people who weren’t able to be reseated and were given a refund at triple-face value.
A decade later, another ice storm is forcing the postponement of an NBA game 1,000 miles away. That delay of course pales in comparison to what the people of north and central Texas are dealing with at the moment. Hundreds of thousands of homes and other buildings are without power. That can bring back some bad memories of what happened during the Texas power crisis of Feb. 2021 when millions of people lost power during a severe winter storm.
Politics or climate?
Ask Jones why his building hasn’t been awarded a Super Bowl since 2011, and he would blame politics. In Jan. 2022, he said on 105.3 The Fan that new stadiums are being constructed with the promise of receiving a Super Bowl — kind of like how Dallas hosted its first-ever Super Bowl two years after opening its new facility.
He is correct that Minneapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and New York, all hosted Super Bowls after opening new state-of-the-art stadiums. However, the Super Bowl is in Arizona this year after being there in 2015. The NFL also replayed other hits from the past and went back to Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, and even Houston.
Dallas had its shot to be part of the rotation and it missed badly. With February winter storms again affecting transportation, it’s time to realize that the Metroplex shouldn’t host a worldwide spectacle like the Super Bowl that requires a massive amount of people to travel there during that time of year.
Plenty of other major events are still out there for Jones’ building to host and keep its elite standing in the public eye.
