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There are plenty of issues that have contributed to the woes the Dallas Cowboys are currently dealing with, including the blinding sun at AT&T Stadium that has once again become a hot topic of conversation. Jerry Jones has attempted to argue what seems to be a literally glaring design flaw was intentional, but there’s one theory that may have targeted the true culprit.
It’s been fifteen years since the Dallas Cowboys played their first game at the massive $1.15 billion venue they initially lent their name to before it became AT&T Stadium in 2013, and Jerry Jones has never been shy about bragging about the role he played in the construction of the largest stadium in the NFL.
It’s difficult for any major details to go overlooked when it comes to the number of people involved in planning that kind of engineering feat.
That includes the orientation of a building that’s positioned in a way that allows the afternoon sun to shine directly through the windows on the west side of the stadium, and those blinding rays seemingly prevented CeeDee Lamb from catching a touchdown when Dallas welcomed the Eagles to town over the weekend.
However, Jones firmly brushed aside concerns about the potential impact of the sun after the game and even went as far as to claim it gave the Cowboys home-field advantage while firmly dismissing the idea of using curtains to combat the problem.
This is far from the first time those windows have sparked a similar discussion, and it’s hard not to wonder why AT&T Stadium ended up being situated in that particular manner in the first place.
Tyler Webb, the co-host of the Pocket Presence podcast, recently decided to take a closer look at that question in a Twitter thread where he noted the environment surrounding AT&T Stadium featured a couple of preexisting structures Jones likely viewed as an eyesore when the project was in the early stages.
There wasn’t really anything Jones could do to address the Walmart located directly north of the stadium, although he (with the help of the city of Arlington and those sweet, sweet eminent domain laws) was able to clear out basically every piece of private property in the area where the venue was ultimately constructed.
However, as Webb notes, there was a notable exception in the form of The Claremont, “a vibrant 55+ active adult community” directly south of the stadium that was the only preexisting development in close vicinity that wasn’t razed. He theorizes those potential blights influenced the decision to make the stadium face east-to-west and subsequently caused the headache Jones stubbornly refuses to address.