DALLAS -- I seriously doubt this was part of the pitch.
I have a hard time believing that Jerry Jones, while trying to persuade the NFL to give Dallas a Super Bowl, said, "And if we're lucky there will be a major ice storm that will cripple the city for a day, maybe two."
But that's what we got down here.
I don't want to play the "our weather is worse than yours" game but it is a dire situation down in Dallas, too. Ice like they're expecting later today will make getting around Dallas extremely difficult, if not impossible.
It wouldn't be the first time Dallas stood still.
November 22, 1963. Dateline, Dallas, the president is dead.
For years, Dallas tried to put that that awful day in its rear-view mirror but the rest of the world wouldn't let them. So Dallas did the only thing it could: it owned it.
In 1989, voters approved a bond referendum that raised money for the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. It is something spine tingling to stand where Lee Harvey Oswald fired shots and killed John F. Kennedy.
Well, not the actual spot -- that's encased in Plexiglas but just feet away.
(And no, I don't want to argue conspiracy theories -- like the fictional Crash Davis, I believe Lee Harvey acted alone.)
This ties into football believe it or not. Which is why we're here in the first place. Football.
Back on that awful weekend in 1963 (I believe it was awful, I don't actually know. I was in the womb), Pete Rozelle, then the NFL's commissioner, decided that the games on that Sunday would go on as scheduled. Rozelle later called it the worst decision of his tenure as commish.
Gary Mack, the curator of the museum, told me Monday that Rozelle made the decision based on the urging of Pierre Salinger, Kennedy's press guy. Salinger never doubted it was the right thing to do even saying later he had the backing of the Kennedy clan. Still, it had to be a tough call.
For the record the Packers beat the 49ers at County Stadium that day. I hope to interview Bart Starr this week. I'd love to hear his take on the decision.
I'm not worried about the storm stopping him from showing up at his event Wednesday.
Starr was always pretty good on ice, don't you think?
