A big, dense ball of gas that has fascinated mankind since the dawn of time, Jerry Jones is constantly innovating in the field of sabotaging his own team. Not content with letting paying customers watch Cowboys players poop, Jones has perfected a unique method of neutralizing players: blinding them with the awesome power of the Sun itself. Supervillain shit.
A wide-open CeeDee Lamb tried and failed to catch a second-quarter touchdown pass in Sunday's 34-6 loss to the Eagles, and it's not really his fault, since he had no idea there was a pass at all. The Sun, low in the standard-time skies and blasting through the huge glass windows at the opposite end of Cowboys Stadium, made sure of that.
Jerry Jones building a stadium that blinds his own players & causes losses is so on brand pic.twitter.com/Nb9VK3FbEQ
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) November 10, 2024
This is not a new thing. Players have been complaining about the Sun since the stadium opened in 2009. "The Sun really is that big a deal," Dez Bryant said after one dropped catch. Cedrick Wilson Jr. once had to duck to avoid getting pegged by a pass he couldn't see. The Cowboys have lots of problems, but so do lots of teams. The difference is that those other teams' problems don't include a 4.6 billion-year-old main-sequence star undergoing constant nuclear fusion in its core.
Historically, outdoor stadium construction in all sports has taken into account the angle of the Sun. FIFA has guidelines that call for a northwest-southeast alignment, with some give in an "acceptable range of orientation" that keeps the glare of a setting sun out of the TV cameras, and affects both ends of the pitch roughly equally. The MLB rulebook states that "it is desirable that the line from home base through the pitchers plate to second base shall run East Northeast," to keep the setting sun out of batters' eyes. NFL stadiums have traditionally been laid out on a north-south axis. But concessions to a lack of building space and the rise of domes has made that more of a willy-nilly affair. Still, 30 other NFL stadiums have managed to avoid this problem. Only Cowboys Stadium lies on a southwest-northeast axis and has that southwest end of the stadium taken up by a big glass wall that lets in direct sunlight for a late-afternoon game.
If only there were some way ... if only humanity could come up with some sort of technology to block the Sun from one's eyes. Lamb, putting on his scientist hat, humbly suggested Jerry Jones look into this newfangled "curtain" idea, telling reporters that he is "one hundred percent" in favor of hanging blackout curtains at the southwest end of the stadium. One problem with that seemingly easy and effective solution: Jerry doesn't want 'em.
The reason for this? Pure aesthetics. Jerry loves images like the photo atop this post. A blackout curtain (which the stadium does have, and uses for events that aren't Cowboys games) would ruin that. Of course Jerry can't just admit that, which leads to scenes like after Sunday's loss, in which he acts snippy and confused toward reporters trying to understand why a massive ball of white-hot plasma 93 million miles away needs to cost his team easy touchdowns.
Unprompted, as Jones was walking away from reporters, he added: “By the way, we know where the Sun is going to be when we decide to flip the coin or not. We do know where the damn sun is going to be in our own stadium.”
Since he brought up the subject, a reporter responded: Why not put up curtains over the windows?
“Well, let’s tear the damn stadium down and build another one,” Jones responded sarcastically. “Are you kidding me?”
Whatever levels of rich and ignorant you have to be to equate drawing a curtain with "building a new billion-dollar stadium," I would like to personally achieve those levels.
“Everybody has got the same thing," Jones said. "Every team that comes in here has the same issues. I’m saying, the world knows where the Sun is. You get to know that almost a year in advance. Someone asked me about the Sun. What about the Sun? Where’s the moon?”
Lot to deal with here. Jones's main point appears to be that the Sun affects both teams equally, which is fair, but when it's one team that has to play all its home games there, and the culprit for their constant blinding is their owner's own stately pleasure-dome, people are gonna say things.
"The world knows where the Sun is." This is true. The Sun is very predictable in that way. In fact, we know where the Sun will be far more than a year in advance. Here, for example, is the solar eclipse of May 11, 2078, whose path will take it directly over Texas; you may want to advise Cowboys coaches to call a slant route during totality to take advantage. And here is a paper discussing how the luminosity of the Sun will have increased by one percent 110 million years from now; for an edge over opponents, the Cowboys may wish to try to build a ground game by then. And here is what will happen in about 6 billion years, when the Sun becomes a red giant, which having exhausted its hydrogen will begin burning helium, expanding and growing hotter until it either sterilizes the Earth or engulfs it entirely; you may want to win a Super Bowl before this happens.
"Where’s the moon?” That is a fantastic question, Jerry.
