A much as it pains me to do this, I need to pay Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones a compliment— he got it right when he built the new $1 billion football stadium, 11,000 square foot television and all.

We went to the stadium Saturday to watch my Oklahoma State Cowboys play the Ole Miss Rebels in the Cotton Bowl game, which was not played in the Cotton Bowl this year. The game was at Jerry World.

There were 78,000 fans in attendance, divided pretty evenly between the Cowboys’ orangeclad sections and the Ole Miss blue-and-red sections. We won the team colors war with our orange shirts, sweatshirts and jerseys, while the Ole Miss fans could not decide on whether to wear red or blue. But, with that number of football fans, the stadium was not crowded.

We figured that the place would be shoulderto shoulder people and it wasn’t. The concourses are on such a large scale that folks have plenty of room to walk around. There also are enough concession stands that the lines are not too long. However, the pricing for food and drinks is exhorbitant as it is at any major sports venue. There are the $8.50 cheeseburgers and $6 soft drinks commemorative cups (I brought home four cups). The security people confiscate any food and drinks people try to take inside, except for the Ole Miss fan behind us who had a flask full of brandy. He got a little tipsy as the game progressed.

The big screen television hanging above the field is something to behold and you can’t help but watch it. I caught myself watching the television instead of the action on the field, partly because it shows its picture live as a play is unfolding. Then you get the instant replay, which showed the OSU fans in vivid detail the calls missed by the referees.

Those missed calls would not have changed the outcome of the game. OSU forgot to bring its offensive unit to the Cotton Bowl and managed to gain just one first down the entire first half of the game. Officiating can’t help that, nor can it fix seven turnovers. Our best weapon was the Ole Miss starting quarterback who threw four interceptions, matching our number.

What I found amazing was the view we had of the field from our corner of the endzone seats. In other stadiums, such as Kyle Field at Texas A&M University, the view is terrible from the corner of the endzone, where the Aggies put visiting fans. At Jerry World, the seats are positioned so that almost everyone gets an unobstructed view of the field. We sat about midway up the altitude scale in real seats, not benches. Our seats could have been better if I had wanted to spend an extra $90 each. Corner of the endzone turned out to be perfectly acceptable.

Jerry did miss out on one donation from us, for parking. We found a private lot about a 10-minute walk away that charged just $40 to park. Fee for a Dallas Cowboys controlled lot is $70. We got to the area easily enough, but leaving with all the other fans was a bit slow, especially when we had to turn back into the mess to get to the restaurant at which we wanted to eat. That took about an hour.

Not being a big fan of the Dallas Cowboys or professional football, for that matter, I may not return to Jerry World until OSU or some other college team on my radar does. But, Jerry got this one right.