A Second Team in Dallas? Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones Has NFL Answer
FRISCO - Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson believes he has the answer to a recent media question, "Which city deserves a new expansion team?''
And the owner of the existing NFL team in Dallas has his answer, too.
“The answer is Dallas,” Johnson tweeted. “Why? We are about to pass the Chicago metro and become the #3 metro in the US, which would make us the largest US metro WITHOUT 2 teams.
"Football is king here. Dallas needs an expansion team and we would be able to sustain 2 NFL teams better than LA or NY.”
Countered Cowboys owner Jerry Jones on Wednesday: “Well, I like the mayor. I like him personally, but he doesn’t have the depth. He doesn’t have the knowledge that others have regarding how unique Dallas is and how we enjoy the interest in the Cowboys.
"He wouldn’t want to water that down as it relates to Dallas if he knew as much, and has spent as much time in sports as I have.”
The good mayor has some solid population-based points.
New York City - or, rather, the New York area - is the No. 1 metro, and is home to the Giants and the Jets. The No. 2 metro area of Los Angeles is now home to the Rams and Chargers, with both teams having moved there within the last six years.
Therefore, two NFL teams in a single metropolitan area is a rare, but not a new, NFL concept.
But Johnson was all along ignoring one major obstacle: We can promise you the Jerry Jones family has no interest in "sharing'' the Cowboys audience in DFW, let alone in Texas. (Ever consider why San Antonio doesn't have a team? Maybe it's because San Antonio fans are already Cowboys fans, and the Dallas franchise likes to keep it that way.)
The mayor's view seems to be in part that AT&T Stadium, home of the Cowboys, is located in Arlington ... while in Johnson's vision the new team could be located in the southern Dallas area.
The mayor has more specifics in regard to his vision. He thinks an AFC team would be best to add to the DFW Metroplex in as much as we already have an NFC team. ... and that an expansion team in Dallas proper could set up a potential Super Bowl matchup.
“We need an AFC team that plays in Southern Dallas,” Johnson tweeted. “It would never want for a fan base or attendance or support from the City of Dallas. Who wouldn’t want to see a Dallas versus Dallas Super Bowl … in the City of Dallas?”
It's a romantic idea. But not a realistic one. As Jones noted: "You can be rest assured that you would not have the NFL supporting another team because of the kind of value that the game and the NFL receives of having [the] Dallas Cowboys as one of its marquee teams and again, logic tells you [the NFL] wouldn’t want to water that down.”
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