(lively upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to The Bookmark, I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today my guests are Burk Murchison and Michael Granberry, authors of Hole in the Roof: The Dallas Cowboys, Clint Murchison Jr., and the Stadium That Changed American Sports Forever.

Thank you both so much for being here today.

- [Burk] Well, thank you.

- [Michael] Thank you.

- I'm really excited to talk about this book, but we gotta start with the most evocative piece which is that title.

Now hopefully people know or they've put some context clues together.

They've seen episodes of Dallas, they know what we're talking about when we say, "Hole in the Roof", but what does that mean?

Where does that come from?

- Well, I mean, it's just, it was such an iconic part of the stadium itself, and I think given the success of the Cowboys and the number of people that viewed those games, and there was also, I guess they, what was it for the what TV show where they came in on a helicopter?

- Dallas.

- Dallas.

- Yeah.

- And they come in and shoot the hole in a roof and it was...

Anyway, it was really remarkable.

And one of the things that made it a unique symbol across America in the world, I think.

- Yeah, that's one of the reasons in the prologue, one of the things I was looking for in trying to... What would be the most dramatic way to illustrate the iconic nature.

And in doing the research, we came across the fact that about a year, before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, one of the terrorists, the ring leader in fact, went to a federal office in Florida he was trying to take out a loan on a small plane.

And he inquired very openly with the person who was waiting on him about two iconic buildings in the United States, the World Trade Center.

We know what happened there, but the other one he asked about was Texas Stadium.

He asked about the hole in the roof specifically.

And I thought, "Well, I mean, if somebody from across the world already knows about the hole in the roof and the iconic nature of it that says, that kind of underscores the whole point of what an icon that design element became."

- Sure.

And it certainly was unique as you both said.

Well, before we dive into the full story, I wanna ask about how the book came to be.

I mean, hopefully our audience is put together.

There may be a familial connection between you and Clint Murchison Jr., but how did you come to write the book?

And then how did you work together on the project?

- [Burk] Well, I mean, it was, I knew that I could do the research and pull the information together.

Had a lot of contacts through it.

I am Clint Murchison Jr.'s second son, and grew up with the Cowboys just as Mike did, jumped from 60 into Cotton Bowl 1960 to Cotton Bowl all the way through the time that until Dad sold the team, and up until now.

And so I knew had a lot of access to people that had played for the Cowboys, had worked for them and whatnot, and through a lot of people in the city and whatnot.

So I felt like I could gather, do the research and gather, but I'm not a true writer, professional writer like Mike, Mike's a superb writer that.

And he came up, actually reached out to a friend of ours and really asked him about possibly doing it.

And I had a lot of respect for him, we've become older, he was a writer with the Morning News, also Alan Peppard, and he's now deceased, unfortunately.

But at the time I talked to him about it and I thought he would've been a good choice except he just...

I think he felt like at the time he didn't have the time to dedicate to it, so he recommended Michael.

And so, I made a call and talked it up and I think Ma just came to the flour, I think it struck a nerve with him, Mike didn't it?

- Yeah, I mean, it really appealed to me.

We started working on it a long time ago.

I mean, I still am a full-time writer with the Dallas Morning News.

And I was at that time, and I had done already, I had done an anniversary piece on Texas Stadium, which I think you had seen.

And I quoted either you, or one of your brothers, I can't remember which at this point, (chuckles) but the family had seen that- - I did the 25th Anniversary kind of special edition in the Morning or something.

- And Burk had (clears throat) the thing that impressed me right off the bat, is he had an enormous passion for the project.

And he really wanted to capture the role that his father played in getting the stadium built, and in owning the Cowboys, founding the Cowboys, from 1960 to 1984.

And I think that one of the things that has happened over the years that we really wanted to try to correct in the book is, I think his... Because of his management style, which was brilliant, he hired three men, Tex Schramm to be the president and general manager, Tom Landry, the great Tom Landry to be the coach, and Gil Brant to be the scouting director.

All three of those guys are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame now.

But because of that, and it was really kind of the opposite of the Jerry Jones strategy.

Jerry Jones wants to, as he said on the day he bought the team, "I'm gonna run everything from jocks to socks."

And Burk's dad took a completely different approach and delegated authority to those two men.

And what did they give him in return?

20 consecutive winning seasons, five Super Bowl appearances, two championships, and the three of them ended up in the Hall of Fame.

But I think that his role was undercut a bit, and because of the success in a way of his style.

But one thing that he controlled entirely was the stadium.

And he really wanted a great...

He wanted a difference making stadium for his team.

And at the time that the Cowboys came into being in 1960, NFL stadiums were city owned rental facilities.

The teams had no power at all in these things.

They were tenants and tenants that actually weren't treated very well.

And he created the prototype of the modern stadium.

And more than anything, he gave Pro-Football teams and now all sports teams, he showed them how you could make this a revenue engine, that it could be an extension of your franchise.

It just didn't have to be something you paid rent money for.

So journalistically, that part of the story really appealed to me.

- [Christine] I think that really shines through, the main character of the book is of course Clint Jr. And you did a really good job of both of you, of highlighting his character, highlighting his vision.

He had good business sense and could see maybe things into the future that other contemporaries were not noticing, or not thinking about like television and how the stadium can function and all that stuff.

- [Burk] They initially thought he was kind of crazy.

(laughs) The other owners- - Well, all the ideas are, aren't they?

- [Burk] Yeah.

They were happy with what they had and he just took it the whole thing.

He loved architecture.

He was a brilliant man and a real visionary.

And he loved architecture.

And I think this was part of what drew him to doing the stadium was that when he actually traveled the team and with 10 away games, he made a point always sitting down in the stands with the crowd, 'cause he wanted to see the stadium wanted to experience what the people experience.

And he was taking mental notes all along about, the good and the bad and whatnot.

Most of it was bad, unfortunately, but, in then he incorporated all that in terms of the...

In the civil in working with the architects, he was very strict about, about wanting to control the process and bring in making recommendation in terms of what needed to be incorporated, to make it a very special place.

- [Christine] Hmm.

- I think he was a real visionary too, in understanding the economics of professional sports and what was, he had a gift for seeing several steps ahead.

Right.

And I think he knew 1966 was the Cowboys first winning season.

They had struggled from 1960 through 1965, 65, they ended up at 577 I think it was.

And so 66 is the first winning season.

He has this incredible team that ended up in the NFL championship game, and the winner of that game at the end of the 66 season, Green Bay and Dallas, unfortunately Green Bay won.

The winner got to go to Super Bowl I, the very first Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs, which used to be the Dallas Texans when the Texans and the Cowboys both started playing in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in the same year, 1960- - [Burk] The same year in the same venue.

I mean it was like a blood bath.

- Yeah, but he knew, he could tell in 66 there were some dark clouds on the horizon for one, Pro-Football was really becoming popular on American television.

It was beginning to usurp baseball as the national pastime.

In fact, I believe the first color game was the Thanksgiving game in Dallas in 66.

- I think it could have been.

- Yeah.

It was, which we have in the book.

And so color television, which is really coming in the latter part of the 60s, is kind of helping the game explode.

But he also knew that at some point the escalating TV revenue would run out.

But the other thing that he can see happening as the game rose in popularity, the players were really paid nothing in those days.

Drew Pearson, who wrote the forward to the great, Hole, the great Drew Pearson, he told me once in an interview that when he started out he was paid $15,000 a year.

And Burke's dad knew financially, the game was going to explode.

And if you were making zero off the stadium, in fact, if the stadium was a lost leader, you were paying rent, you weren't making anything off the stadium except the ticket revenue that you had to share with all the other teams.

You were gonna be in trouble, if it continued that way.

So he saw it as a way...

He saw the stadium potentially as a way to change the economic dynamics of the game.

And I think that... My own opinion, that's the single biggest contribution of Texas Stadium and that's why owners want these mega stadium... Not just owners, Texas high schools have these stadiums now with luxury suites, right.

- They've yeah, absolutely.

- So he was really way ahead of his time in that regard.

- They've truly become big business.

- Yeah.

- And it's almost... For most of my lifetime, football has been America's pastime.

So, it was so interesting to read this book and try to put myself back in this time when you're struggling to get the Dallas Cowboys on television, I can't imagine a world where, (chuckles) that just seems so foreign to me because, the Thanksgiving Day game, that's an institution that's every year.

That's something we've always been- - [Burk] His father, dad's father, our grandfather thought that he was nuts.

(laughs) And it's kind of interesting to look at the dichotomy 'cause our grandfather, the Philadelphia Athletics, there were two teams in Philadelphia, this is back in the early 50s.

And they were gonna...

They were up for sale, they were struggling, and he tried to buy him an idea was to move him to the West Coast.

But so he focused, that was America's game in that era.

That was the game that he focused on and made a bid to buy 'em, and didn't end up, it didn't work out.

But dad, in contrast to that, dad saw the potential of football surpassing baseball as America's sport.

And he went for that and said, and our grandfather just thought he was crazy.

Particularly in starting off with a competitor in the same stadium in the same city.

But dad, he was up for the challenge and it was real interesting the contrast between the two.

- Yeah, one of the fun things in working on the writing was all of these various parallels, right?

And so, that's really so true what Burk is saying about his grandfather.

But one of the stories we have in the book, which is fascinating is, we kind of draw these parallels.

One thing that Clint Sr., Clint Jr., and Jerry Jones all have in common is their big risk takers, right?

Whereas your uncle who was the 50/50 partner was not nearly the risk taker that your dad was- - well, he was just kind of different star.

- But there's a great Jerry Jones story, which Burke reminded me of when he was talking about how his grandfather thought Clint Jr. was crazy for doing this.

Jerry Jones was 25 years old when he first tried to buy a National Football, or a Pro-Football team.

He wanted to buy the San Diego Chargers, they were for sale.

He went to Barron Hilton who owned the team at that time.

And he was gonna be able to do it.

And I guess he needed some help from his dad, or he sought out his father for advice.

And his father not only told him he was nuts, he said, "You're not going to do it."

(chuckles) And so what happens, right after Jerry tells the Chargers that he's gonna have to back out, the merger occurs between the American Football League and the National Football League, a merger negotiated, by the way, at Dallas Love Field between Lamar Hunt, the owner of the second...

The Kansas City Chiefs who founded the Dallas Texas, and Tech Schramm, the president and general manager of the Cowboys.

So right after Jerry tells the Chargers, "I'm sorry, I can't do it," these guys complete the merger in Dallas and the value of the Chargers, like within a month or so of Jerry telling them he can't do it, it doubles, the value doubles.

So, he knew he had the right idea, he knew what he was doing in that regard.

But to me, one the really fun things about the book, it was certainly a fun thing in writing.

It was, the personalities throughout the book are amazing.

I mean, it's just a collection of profiles of these zany characters, who are just all over the book.

And it was really fun to delve into their psychologies and tell those stories.

- [Christine] We could talk for hours.

There's so much history in this book.

I'm gonna skip over maybe the founding of the Cowboys, if you want that story, it's certainly all in here, their early years where they struggled.

But I wanna talk about the stadium- - [Michael] Sure.

- Since that is the title of the book.

As you mentioned, they started in the Cotton Bowl.

What was the impetus or why did he wanna move?

And then how did they end up in Irving with Texas Stadium?

- [Burk] Cotton Bowl had been built like in 1935.

- No, actually I think it was 30.

1930, right at the hight of the Depression.

- 1930.

And it was down in a terrible area town that changed, demographically had changed with the passage of time and whatnot, and the stadium itself, had never been properly cared for by the city.

It was even though it was city controlled and it was falling apart.

And dad, after World War II moved back to Dallas to raise his family.

And he'd loved football.

And so he had spent a lot of time at the Cotton Bowl and just got really sick at the facility.

And it was an embarrassment really.

And so his... And that was really, I think what what incited him to kind of begin the process of looking for building a new stadium.

And I could go on from there if you'd like, but- - Yeah, please do.

- Because he initially looked (clears throat) at thinking that real estate would be too expensive in other parts of town, to allow the construction of viable construction of a new stadium.

He focused on Fair Park, which is kind of southeast Dallas.

And the idea just built a new stadium down there, raised the Cotton Bowl and go on.

But then he quickly learned that there were actually other areas of downtown on the opposite side of town, on the southwest quadrant.

There was acreage available that had been a raily yards that were a lot of real estate readily available there that was affordable and could make Ford.

And he just thought doing a downtown would be something that would really just highlight downtown Dallas and give it a real shot in arm, particularly coming out of the assassination and whatnot.

And Michael's covered the assassination and in depth, so he could kind of pick up from there.

But it was something that he...

Anyway, if you wanna just take it from there, Michael.

- Well, as you were saying that, this sort of re this stadium conflict that he got into with the mayor of Dallas, who at the time was a genius of a man.

They had that in common.

Clint Murchison Jr. had gone to MIT, I would call him a genius, he really was.

And Eric Johnson, the mayor of Dallas, who was one of the founders of Texas Instruments, I mean, one of the real high tech pioneers, but they were oil and water.

They were the worst two people that you could have trying to negotiate something that would be good for everybody, right.

And I have this sort of unusual personal story that reminded me of our book this past week.

My son Sam recently got married, he and his bride went to Greece for their honeymoon.

So he says, "We're gonna fly nonstop from Istanbul to DFW on Tuesday night.

Can you pick us up, dad?"

So I'm driving there and I'm thinking, "Wow, this relates to our book."

What Eric Johnson wanted more than anything was the creation of DFW Airport.

I mean, it would've been unheard of a non-stop flight from Istanbul to Dallas Fort Worth, back in the day?

So Eric Johnson helped bring that about, and he was not going to let anything happen to compromise his vision for DFW, which was not as easy a political dance as you might have thought it would be, right.

But he also had other ideas.

Three to four years after the Kennedy assassination, Dallas had been called the City of Hate, it had a terrible reputation.

I was a sixth grader when that occurred, it was a deeply scarring, deeply emotionally wounding event.

And frankly, the only thing that kind of lifted us out of that three years later was the success of the Cowboys.

I think his dad had a brilliant idea, but Eric's idea was a city hall designed by the great architect.

I am pay the biggest downtown library, the biggest airport in the country.

Just build and build and build and be better.

But he had no interest in sports.

And in my opinion, what he failed to grasp was the fact that the city was so emotionally wounded and sports was one of the ways that could be healed.

And indeed it was, even though they played in Irving at the time.

But I think it would've been even better if there had been a stadium in downtown Dallas that would've brought the community together every Sunday as it was for 50 years after the assassination, downtown Dallas was a ghost town.

And it's only now beginning to kind of come back and be a little more of vibrant.

And were it not for former Mayor Ron Kirk who helped spearhead American Airlines Center, where the Dallas Stars and the Dallas Mavericks play.

We wouldn't have any professional right.

Sports franchises, we wouldn't have any, they would all be in Arlington, all right.

- Over time, dad's vision, it was like kind of morphing over time a little bit.

At first it was the stadium and then it grew.

He just thought maybe let's just do away with Fair Park altogether and let's redevelop... Let's sell that and reposition relocate all the museums and performance hall around the stadium in Southwest, the Southwest Squadron of Dallas and just build a whole new cultural sports complex.

- Right.

- And it would've just really showcased Alison, it had been just a measure shot in the arm.

And unfortunately, Eric Johnson, they was an autograph.

And he was just a incredibly difficult man to deal with and he thought he could intimidate everybody and get his way, which in this case he did.

But dad was not going to kowtow to him and just give up on his.

And that's when he began to look at an alternate site other than downtown and begin to shift his focused urban.

- I cover the arts still for the Dallas Morning News.

I'm a full-time writer with the Morning news and I cover the arts and have since 2006.

And one of the things that really intrigues me is, here in 66, his dad has this vision, not only to bring the Dallas Cowboys downtown, but to bring the arts downtown.

And what was hilarious about the research, the research we did in this regard is they scoffed at him.

They literally laughed at him about the arts component.

"No, it's never gonna leave Fair Park, forget it."

So ironically, in 1984, the year that his dad sells the team, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, moves from Fair Park to downtown Dallas and becomes the Dallas Museum of Art, which spearheads the migration of all these arts groups to downtown Dallas.

And thus, they all become part of the Dallas Arts District.

This was the very thing they laughed at him for, right.

And so I think he was just way ahead of them in that regard as it was even in Irving, playing in a stadium that was radically different from any other stadium in the league at the time.

He really did make a difference, and particularly economically, he showed owners that... And in my opinion, this is why he would love to see his dad in the Pro-Football Hall of Fame, and he should be for this reason alone, because he showed them, he rewrote the dynamic of the professional sports stadium completely, to the point where baseball follows it now, the NBA follows it, all the other, even high schools, Katy Texas, 72 million on a football stadium.

I don't think he would appreciate some of the excesses that take place in the name of stadiums nowadays.

- What do you call 'em?

Franklin Stadium.

- Yeah.

(chuckles) But he really, but he really paved the way.

- Sure, and I wanted to talk about that because some of the ideas he had for his new stadium, like luxury boxes that people could own- - [Burk] Right.

- Seems so commonplace now.

- [Burk] Right.

- But that was a new idea, that was an innovation that he did.

- [Burk] Yeah, it was pretty cutting edge and he did it, they had been available on a limited scale, at a number of stadiums, including the Astrodome, but in that case, they were kind of an afterthought and they're way up at the round the top of the stadium near the dome itself.

And they were just...

It was just kind of a natural thought.

But with dad, he made 'em between the first and the second level.

He created two levels and I think they're 178 in all, and $50,000 each, a person could buy 'em.

And he ended up, I think he ended, he didn't realize, I think they ended up being incredibly successful in terms of the sales and actually created enough revenue finance about a third of the cost of the stadium.

But he, in the end, he felt like, I think he felt like he left a lot of money on the table, and maybe he should have done like a lease or something.

We get recurring income over time and it's a lot of things, but he had no idea.

I mean, they were, they were kind of rolling the dice the whole time.

But it was something that was incredibly unique and now has become just part and parcel every stadium designed, and constructed these days.

- There was this one guy that I interviewed, I don't remember who it was, but he was a little bit critical of the whole luxury sweet thing.

And he said, well, Clint Jr. introduced an element of stratification into professional sports.

But then in doing the math on this, I realized, "No, that's not really a fair criticism."

I mean, there were like 178 suites to begin with.

- [Burk] Right.

- And I think there was, I can't remember exactly how many, maybe 12 seats.

- Well, it was, yes, it works out to about 2,500 people, that would be seated in the stadium.

- Yeah, 2,500 People in a stadium of 65,000, but I do wanna make this point about him as a journalist, which I think is so incredible that seating, 2,500 seats, you said?

That allowed him to pay for one third of the cost of financing Texas Stadium, one third, 2,500 seats out of 65,000.

And the one thing that I really admire about him is, he didn't...

In Irving, he never took one penny of taxpayer money.

And as nowadays the new stadium in Buffalo, New York, 1.5 billion outdoor stadium in Buffalo financed almost entirely by taxpayers.

- Union labor too, right.

- I don't know, but it just, I don't, that's what bothers me as a journalist.

It's like you've got 32 billionaire owners and you're still fleecing taxpayers for the cost of these billion dollar stadiums.

And he didn't take any money from taxpayers.

He found a different way.

- He just, yeah.

They just take to an extreme, I think.

- [Christine] Sure, yeah.

- It's just, it's almost overwhelming.

- [Christine] And that's a theme we see in the book.

The seeds that he planted weren't necessarily bad or good, but what they became, as you call 'em, Franklin stadiums, it really changed.

Unfortunately, we are running out of time.

There's so much more in the book that we don't get to cover, how he sold the Cowboys, what they became, how they grew and what we know now.

So I'll leave that for you all to read in the book, but in our final two minutes, what do you want the takeaway from the book to be?

- Oh, I just...

I think I would focus on the role that dad played in the day and in the contribution he made to the NFL.

'Cause that's really part of the motivation and in terms of writing this thing, is to showcase dad and his contribution to the NFL.

And he was the major pioneer and deserve recognition.

- I agree with all of that, but I think this book is highly relevant to 2023, in terms of what's going on with stadiums, not just in the NFL, but in American society, frankly, around the world.

He really opened the door to a new kind of stadium, but with that, with 50, 60 years later, there are some excesses as well.

- Well, thank you so much both for being here.

I really enjoyed talking with you.

I enjoyed the book very much, I highly recommend it to anybody who's not just a football fan, but history.

I mean, there's a lot of wonderful local Dallas history and business history in here, so.

- [Burk] Sure, thanks.

- [Michael] Thank you Christine.

- Thank you so much.

- I appreciate it.

- That's all the time we have for today.

The book, again, was called Hole in the Roof.

Thank you so much for joining me, and I will see you again soon.

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