Watching Games in Luxury : Texas Stadium--How Suite It Is for Spectators

Soon, you working stiffs no longer will have the privilege of paying $19 to be mesquite-broiled while watching your Dallas Cowboys play summer practice games at Texas Stadium.

Frankly, you and your paper fans are just in the way. Your perspiration stains are simply ruining the neighborhood.

What do you think this is, Philadelphia?

Before long, Texas Stadium will go completely condo. It’s as inevitable as Rome’s fall. This summer, 118 Crown Suites have been added to the 178 Circle Suites. This cost the stadium about 1,500 seats. But this will cost suite patrons $26.50 per game ticket.

That’s right, J.R., tickets are not included in the $1.5 million cash you paid for your 20-seat Crown Suite. What do you think this is, Arlington Stadium? Or maybe you just leased your Crown for $125,000 a season. Figuring the $530 for tickets, and $1,000 or so a Sunday for caterer and liquor, that’s a mere $16,691 per regular-season game.

Cowboys holdout Tony Dorsett might make more in tips tending bar in a Crown Suite.

After all, who in a suite really watches the game? The women are too busy watching themselves in the mirrored walls. The men are too busy watching other men’s women. And when patrons aren’t trying the escargot straight from Calluaud’s, or playing with computers that provide stats, scores and specific replays, they’re parading from suite to suite to see and be seen.

One day soon, if you know who won the Cowboys game just after it’s over, then you didn’t go, Waldo. You watched it on TV like all the other low-rents. One day, Texas Stadium will be the first high-rise in the round. No more hot dogs and Cokes and squeezing into hard-back seats. No more of that gauche screaming or clapping. Patrons may send their servants to ask the players if they could please keep it down a little.

What do you think this is, Plano? Imagine what you could get in Plano for $1.5 mil. Just think, you even could live in it.

“I don’t know any other area in the country that could support 296 suites, and that includes New York City,” Bert Rose was saying the other night as we waited for the new express elevator to the Crown Suites. Rose is vice president of Texas Stadium Corp. Without advertising, he said, he has leased or sold 65 Crowns--far ahead of projection. Naturally, the most expensive--the eight 20-seaters between the 35-yard lines--went first.

As Cowboys president Tex Schramm says, “If all 65,000 seats were between the 35s, we’d sell out every game.” Instead, you often can buy end zone seats right up to kickoff. You might as well live in Houston as sit in the end zone for just $19.

“I don’t think Houston could support this many suites, and it’s larger than Dallas,” Rose said. “Its economy is tied to one industry (oil). But the Metroplex is so diverse. The real estate alone--oh, my gosh.”

Oh, my gosh. We stepped off the elevator onto Italian marble and walked down a hall that reminded you of a high-tech hotel--an Anatole, say. Unlike the Circle Suites, the Crowns come pre-decorated. You may choose from three color schemes--gray, maroon or blue on gray. Each suite comes with reclining chairs, wet bar, VCR hookup, two TVs (one computerized) and electric windows, just like your limo’s.

They also come with one problem. When you say high tech, you mean high. We’re talking way upscale. As you plebians can see from the highway, the Crowns replaced upper-deck rows 25 and 26. They ring the stadium’s rim.

“It’s panoramic,” Rose said, perhaps pitching unsold end zone Crowns. “This way you can really see the play unfold at the far goal line.”

We took a look from a goal-line Crown. Of course, Texas Stadium, built just for football, isn’t as tall as many others. But for my millions I’d prefer one of the old Circle Suites about halfway up. From some Crowns, you might need an observatory telescope to see the stars. The next Crown extra?

But I’m sounding like one of the peasants under glass. Circles are now being advertised in the want ads. Circles are out. Everybody wants an original A. Warren Morey, who designed the Crowns.

If you hurry, you still can get an eight-seat end zone Crown for $300,000, or $30,000 a season. The old Circles might as well be by Fox and Jacobs. Six Circles work off the same air-conditioner. Each Crown has its own.

And in a Crown, if the Cowboys let you down, you can roll down the window, give them a thumbs-down and put in a VCR tape of an old Super Bowl. Caesar would have had a Crown.

As we left, we passed lots of Cleopatras in the latest from one of the exclusive shops near Inwood and Lovers. Their makeup was by Geronimo. I wondered if any of them thought Dorsett played, uh, temporary setback?

I asked Rose if any famous Dallas names had bought Crowns. He hesitated. “When the Circles first opened,” he said, “there was a lot of publicity and the N.Y. Times took pictures and all. But as that got old, (the owners) thought, ‘Gosh, how does this benefit me?’ In some ways, it was negative.”

We certainly wouldn’t want to give that East Coast press further reason to stereotype Texas Stadium patrons as Texas rich.