Cowboys Looking at a Home on the Range : Austin, Tex., May Lure Dallas From CLU Camp

The Dallas Cowboys are considering a proposal to hold training camp in Austin, Tex., and abandon the Thousand Oaks site that has been their summer home each year for more than a quarter-century.

Austin has made an aggressive bid to lure the Cowboys from Cal Lutheran--the National Football League team’s summer training camp since 1963. The Cowboys’ contract with the school expires after next summer.

New team owner Jerry Jones and first-year Coach Jimmy Johnson indicated several weeks ago that they might consider moving training camp.

“If we don’t get them, it won’t be because we didn’t try,” Austin Chamber of Commerce spokesman Chuck Taylor said Tuesday.

Newspapers in Texas reported during the summer that several other sites also are being considered, including Vail and Greeley in Colorado and the Texas cities of Lubbock and Tyler. But Austin, the capital of Texas, has emerged as the front-runner, according to a Cowboy official who asked to remain anonymous.

“We are keeping all of our options open,” the team official said Monday. “We have had discussions with other places as possible sites for our training camp, and Austin is one of them. Austin is highest on our list.”

Cal Lutheran officials said that they have not heard anything about a planned move.

“We have a valid contract with the Cowboys through the 1990 season,” school administrator Dennis Gillette said. “We know of no plans by the Cowboys to relocate their training camp after that.”

But according to the Austin Chamber of Commerce, an all-out effort has been undertaken by the central Texas city.

“We have met with Jack Dixon, the Cowboys’ chief financial officer, and others with the Cowboys,” said Taylor, who is the chairman of the chamber’s Sports and Leisure Committee. “I would say the Cowboys at this point are very interested in Austin as the site for their training camp.”

Taylor would not disclose whether the city would back the effort with taxpayers’ money, but he did indicate that private funding would provide the bulk of its offer to the Cowboys.

“As far as public funds, I can’t talk about that,” he said. “But let me just say that if we had the Dallas Cowboys training in Austin, Texas, a lot of people in this neck of the woods would be thrilled to death. Let’s put it that way.”

The proposal calls for the Cowboys to take over the campus of St. Edward’s University in Austin. The school does not have a football program, but Taylor said the 180-acre campus has several soccer fields that would be converted into football fields for the Cowboys and that it already has extensive locker-room facilities.

The city is also banking heavily on its rabid interest in football, which is reflected in its near-fanatical support of football at the University of Texas.

“This community has grown up with a tradition of excellence in football,” Taylor said. “That tradition is a real plus for us in these negotiations.”

Taylor said, however, that city officials have no other meetings scheduled with the Cowboys. A decision is not expected to be made public until after the current NFL season.

“The Cowboys’ priority right now is their season, and we will not interfere with that,” Taylor said. “The Cowboys’ attention will be focused only on the current season for the next few months.”

Taylor added that if the team selects Austin as the site for future training camps, he and others will make a trip to Thousand Oaks to meet with officials of that city and with representatives from Cal Lutheran.

“The Cowboys have made it plain to us that they certainly do not want to do anything to hurt their relationship with Cal Lutheran and Thousand Oaks,” Taylor said. “But if they decide to come to Austin for training camp, we would like to get some tips from those folks out there. They’ve obviously been doing something right to have kept the Cowboys coming back for so many years.”