Murphy: No place like Texas

Brian Murphy writes about his trip to see the Vikings play the Dallas Cowboys

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By Brian Murphy

JERRY’S WORLD -- Never thought I would disagree with the wisest of Hollywood villains, but Keyser Soze had it all wrong about Satan’s sleight-of-hand.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people with disposable and non-disposable income to buy standing-room tickets to an NFL game so they could watch it on television next to a concourse bar on $25 cocktail night. And leave them wanting more.

AT&T Stadium isn’t really one at all. It’s a state of mind. There are 80,000 seats, some of which are actually in Texas, stacked level upon gilded level until they reach cruising altitude. Think an un-zoned colossus of sprawl in suburban Dallas, an aircraft carrier of excess leaning hard into gambling, sex, booze, greed and gummies. All the things that make living in 2025 America tolerable.

For a franchise that hasn’t sniffed a Super Bowl in 30 years, the Cowboys and owner Jerry Jones have perfected the art of acting as if. The perpetual smirk on Jerry’s face isn’t just the Johnny Walker Blue. It’s the satisfaction of a man who cracked the code decades ago and has been billing someone else ever since.

Watching Jerry side eye son Stephen in their luxury lair during another Cowboys loss reminds me of Jackie Gleason’s Sheriff Buford T. Justice cursing his son for botching his wedding day in “Smokey And The Bandit.”

“There’s no way … no way! … that you came from my loins.”

It’s the look of an emperor who gambled young, struck oil, and hasn’t answered to anyone since buying the crown jewel of socialized capitalism -- the Dallas freakin’ Cowboys. Not just a rich guy with a toy, but a marketing warlord gazing out from his suite, winking knowingly at the endless skim.

Below him, 20,000 seatless patrons stood twelve-deep, staring up at the big, beautiful videoboard. Outside, the Miller Lite House. The 70-yard turf field. The 87,000 square feet of kiosks where kids past their bedtimes sprinted laps while parents mingled with degenerates cursing their fantasy lineups at 60 television screens.

All of it perfectly positioned between the exits and the ride-share lanes, giving Jerry and his NFL barons one last chance to jam their sticky fingers into your pockets before charging you for the privilege of leaving.

It’s a magical thing to exploit and be exploited.

We are chronically addicted to pro football and the escapism corporate America has mainlined into our veins for 50-plus years. Unscripted entertainment at its finest, meticulously scripted to our primal television habits and tribal wiring. Possibly the last pure thing left on this burning planet.

Which makes it fertile ground for another existential road trip with Vikings fans, who need vices more than most. The Great Race to 9-8 has never felt so spiritually necessary in a lost season where expectations for January were reduced to simply walking upright in December.

So it was a pleasant surprise to not only see a wildly entertaining Vikings win, but to watch all of Kevin O’Connell’s horses and all the head coach’s men continue the delicate work of putting J.J. McCarthy back together again.

You can’t restart a season with eight losses. But you can sell hope for 2026 by running the table. That makes the Giants and the season-ending home games against Detroit and Green Bay golden opportunities for McCarthy to answer for the pathetic play that helped bury Minnesota’s postseason dreams.

Playing spoiler isn’t the same as playing for something. But visible progress in front of a friendly audience can sand down rough edges and fuel a kinder offseason narrative, when McCarthy and O’Connell retreat into the lab to fix mechanics, mindset, and whatever else keeps breaking quarterbacks in this town.

I’m a big-picture guy, but all the talk of plant feet and pre-snap reads rings hollow when you’re grinding through December just so May feels less depressing than January should have been.

Hail to the party planners

Times like these try NFL travelers’ souls, when the journey matters more than the destination and day-trippers draw deeper nourishment from the social mash-up than the scoreboard.

This was my fifth year tagging along with this merry band of successful professionals, veterans, high-school buddies and recent retirees. All north of 50, deeply rooted in St. Paul, and at varying stages of domestic tranquility or chaos. Everyone eager to check out for a weekend of alpha-male peacocking, dubious decision-making and hemorrhaging cash into the NFL’s bottomless blood funnel.

Responsible partying, with enough access to lawyers and bail money to occasionally step onto the ledge. No arraignments yet.

One founding father insists the group is 19-0 despite only 16 years of travel, including a confirmed loss in Foxborough that “doesn’t count” because they dropped anchor at a tailgate and never entered the stadium. The Vikings, meanwhile, are 5-0 every time I’ve boarded a plane for them, including wins in Las Vegas and Jacksonville where they couldn’t be bothered to score a touchdown.

Dallas was circled in May, when Delta devotees quietly locked in flights before airline gouging reached biblical levels. Another box checked. No permafrost. Lone Star tall boys. Matthew McConaughey somewhere nearby whispering that time is a flat circle.

Blessed to be a passenger. Logistics are for suckers. But someone has to be the adult.

Pour one out for the organizer who books the house, arranges rides, hits the liquor store and distributes a single-spaced, double-sided agenda nobody reads. Another for the quiet patriots who load dishwashers, wash bedding and fish lawn chairs out of the pool to save the security deposit. And a final, final for the bookkeeper accepting Venmo, Zelle, cash, checks and the IOUs that will never be honored.

We were a better nation with paper tickets and trustworthy scalpers. When you could look a man in the eye, exchange cash, and avoid the retinal scan required to access an app your phone downloads at the gate while wheezing at 2 percent battery.

No matter how well you plan, there’s always a freestyler who is part court jester, part jail bait. The guy or gal who keeps everyone laughing and/or wincing, who inhales the lost weekend ethos but sometimes forget they’re not alone in the room. Or that it’s still light outside on Day 1 and we have a long way to go.

The wheels didn’t come off Saturday night, but the lug nuts loosened. Losing a wallet is bad. Being hungover while canceling credit cards with your bank is worse.

After hours of investigation, a retired cop among us finally found the missing ID, cards and cash Monday morning -- in the pocket of his own jacket.

This was the first Sunday night game the traveling fools booked, and the first time I joined them on Friday, which challenges momentum, stamina and one’s life choices. You can’t get from homemade breakfast burritos to kick off without drinking and gambling your way through the noon and 3 o’clock game windows at the nearest dive bar.

Ours was the Dallasite Billiards in the Deep Ellum neighborhood, where the Lone Star and Big Gingers were flowing with the local conversations. As Patrick Mahomes crumbled and the Chiefs’ dynasty died, it was time to order individual rides to Jerry’s World since Dallas isn’t the town I would convene a motorcade.

Tailgating, like everything in the NFL, has grown into a corporate exercise of cross-functional inertia, wide-ranging opinions and ownership of nothing.

Better to just pay for a prepackaged, all-inclusive experience in the tent next to the Discount Tire across the street from Jerry’s World. They absolutely nailed the whiskey, brisket and game show hijinks in front of a giant screen showing the Rams dagger the Lions to stake their claim as the NFL’s elite team.

The offsite party was the last time you didn’t need a co-signer for something to imbibe.

Monday morning melancholy

Monday Melancholy is a real thing when the leftovers are being parsed, the recycling organized and the floors swept. The true discoveries of day-drinking with checked-out adults for an entire weekend come during the morning de-briefings, when fact and fiction morph into the better story and the absurdity of it all makes you wanna stay just one more day.

Nothing good happens checking your debit history, email, or calendar the day after. Responsibility arrives too soon.

That’s why it pays to travel elite-status adjacent. There was a time this professional road warrior dominated the airline and hotel points game. When upgrades were ubiquitous and 20,000 miles meant more than an extra bag of Cheetos in steerage.

These days status is a highly matrixed shell game of seizing an aisle seat and aiming for Zone 3 boarding while airlines squeeze the soul out of traveling and somehow convince their cramped and gouged passengers that they’re special.

My guys game the system like Jedis. Drink tickets, lounge passes, linen service flexes. Enough to enjoy all the “my CapitalOne wallet is bigger than yours” swordfights everyone in coach longs to hear.

Because laughing hardest through it all are Jerry, Junior and the Park Avenue bean counters who have monetized Sundays forever.

And we keep showing up, twelve-deep without seeing the field, staring at the screen, convinced we’re all going to hell while there’s no place else you’d rather be.

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