The battle rages on over the Double J’s stadium Godzillascreen. Lofty SI columnist Peter King reported that the league’s competition committee convened via conference call Tuesday to discuss how to handle the situation. It’s all but a certainty that the league will mandate that the board be raised another 20 to 25 feet. U2, who are playing the venue in October, had planned on raising the board temporarily to accommodate their 164-foot tall stage setup, designed specifically so that Bono can lecture you about forgiving Third World government debt from various points of altitude. But that can be done at a relatively minor cost.
Raising the board permanently will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million. And. because the Cowboys raised the screen to height specs given to them by the league, Jerry Jones has a solid argument that the NFL should foot that tab.
Regardless of who ends up paying for it, it’s still an embarrassing situation for Jones, who has to be mortified that the only thing people want to talk about in his new $1.2 billion stadium is why the idiots who designed it hung a giant TV too low to the ground. The stadium was designed by architectural firm HKS, who also designed the new Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Plans to have a video board in the center of THAT stadium were scrapped after the team trotted punter Hunter Smith out onto the field to see how high he could punt the ball. Turns out, punters can kick a ball in the air at a very high trajectory. Who knew?
Even when the video board is raised, there’s still a danger that punters will STILL be able to nail the sucker. Then there was this hypothetical matzo ball from one of King’s readers…
"What happens if a QB hits Dallas' big screen with a pass intentionally?''
That could happen if a team is trying to kill the clock on the Cowboys on a final possession. Never mind that Eli Manning couldn’t hit that screen if you gave him a cherry picker. A strong-armed fellow like JaMarcus Russell could pull it off easily.
Then there are the aesthetic issues with the screen itself. I watched the FOX telecast Friday night and the clarity on the screen was so good, it appeared as if the FOX production truck had superimposed the video onto the picture. I couldn’t focus on anything else on screen, and that problem is magnified greatly, I’m told, when you attend games in person. Many people have told me the screen is so large, and your eyes are so drawn to it, that you literally CAN’T look away from it and watch the actual game transpiring on the field. It’s like a giant Opti-Grab. I wouldn’t be surprised if it caused seizures in children, much like any Japanese cartoon.
So there are your problems with Kongvision for the day. Tune in next week when the screen drops from the ceiling and kills a kid in a wheelchair.
