New Cowboys stadium to double as state prison
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Texas Governor Rick Perry announced a historic agreement that will make the NFL team’s new stadium both a sports venue and a correctional institution.
The as-yet-unnamed stadium, scheduled to open in 2009, will feature a retractable roof, fully operable glass doors in each end zone, and a maximum security solitary confinement wing.
With the Cowboys’ recent signings of players battling legal trouble, such as Adam “Pacman” Jones and Tank Johnson, constructing a fully functional prison in the new stadium was “an ideal move,” Jones stated.
“Our organization is committed to signing the best available pro football players,” Jones told reporters at a press conference announcing the plans. “Some of those players have pasts that are considered ‘questionable’ by some of the other teams in the league. The Cowboys do not believe in discriminating against those players, which is why we approached Governor Perry about combining our new state-of-the-art sports entertainment complex with a state prison.”
Jones said the merger will save Texas taxpayers money by reducing transportation and security costs.
“Unfortunately, some members of our organization have to be confined by the state under the judicial system,” Jones elaborated. “With this new facility, those players can display their outstanding athletic skills and pay their debt to society in a single, convenient location with all the amenities that today’s football fans and hardened criminals have come to expect.
“In this stadium, players can go straight from their cells to the sidelines. It’s a win-win.”
Perry agreed.
“When you think about it, football stadiums and prisons share a lot of the same features, such as exercise rooms, limited medical facilities, service areas, classrooms for adults and an exercise yard,” Perry told the gathering of reporters. “Why should the public have to pay to shuttle offenders back and forth from their place of incarceration to their place of employment? It only makes sense to build a prison where there is already a high concentration of criminals, such as the Cowboys’ locker room.”
The governor added that he was negotiating with state Attorney General Greg Abbott to lift restrictions on several Cowboys players that bar them from crossing state lines.
“We did talk to [NFL Commissioner] Roger Goodell about allowing us to play all of our regular season and playoff games at home due to this unfortunate situation, but we were rebuffed,” Perry explained.
Officials are still working on modifications to the stadium design which will allow for the careful screening of 80,000 spectators for weapons, drugs and other contraband.
