ARLINGTON — The fans — a sea of blue-and-white, red-and-yellow jerseys — faced forward, eyes locked on the West entrance of AT&T Stadium. A thin rope stood between the horde and their destiny: the Thanksgiving showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Dallas Cowboys.
An AT&T employee, Juan Alvarez, eyeing the brouhaha, took cover in a crevice by his post. Then, like a dam giving way, the rope fell. The ticketholders, the standing-room-only flock, lurched forward into the building — a sea of flailing limbs — in pursuit of a view for the game. An iPhone discarded on the floor here, a plush star-shaped item abandoned (briefly) there. Each team’s cheers filled the air, a sonic tug-of-war.
“A lady broke her ankle right in front of me,” Ariana Franklin, another AT&T employee, said, recalling a previous game. “I had to wheel her away,” she added, returning then to answer questions from fans.
Before the game’s end, which saw the Cowboys prevail 31-28 in a back-and-forth game, optimism was high in the stadium among both the home and visiting team’s fan bases.
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When asked who he thought would win, Alvarez, a fan, said the Cowboys. Why? “They have to,” he said.
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View GallerySwift no-shows
To get it out of the way: pop phenom Taylor Swift appeared to be a no-show. Speculation swirled for weeks over whether she’d make an appearance. Would Swift emerge on the halftime stage for a scintillating, surprise “Fortnight” duet with headliner Post Malone? No, she did not.
The media and gossip blogs have been spellbound by all things Swift since her teenage days as an earnest country crooner, but interest in her personal life and music has reached new heights now that the singer is engaged to Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — a dizzying match of stardom. When Swift has watched Kelce’s home games at the Arrowhead Stadium this season, she largely has slipped under the radar.
The Dallas Morning News’ Tim Cowlishaw posed with a cardboard cutout of the singer before the game. Farewell to the elaborate seat Jerry Jones promised to bestow upon Swift, if she attended. The cutout may have been the closest North Texans got to spotting Swift this Thanksgiving.
A pricey game – still worth it
This year’s Thanksgiving matchup was the most expensive in recent memory. Tickets were priced on average at $546, but the experience of seeing their beloved teams play appeared to outweigh the cost for some fans.
“To see it live versus seeing it on TV it was more than I expected,” said Rhonda Thompson, 54. It was her first time at a football game in person. Was it worth it? “Hell yeah!” said her husband, JC Thompson. The pair flew in from Atlanta. Rhonda praised the camaraderie she felt both with other Cowboys’ supporters and the Chiefs’ base. “This is my favorite Thanksgiving,” she said.
Dallas resident Jordyn Swingle was rooting for the Chiefs – a lone wolf sporting red and yellow in her group of friends who were decked out in Cowboys paraphernalia. Despite her team’s loss, buying the ticket was worth it for her. Once Swingle heard about the matchup — it didn’t matter what time of day it was, she said, she knew she’d be coming. “Was it worth my mom’s wrath for not being at Thanksgiving?” she added, though, “that is still to be determined.”
The lure of sports fandom even extended beyond the country’s borders. Robert Lawrence, 44, and Lee Borthwick, 44, touched down in North Texas on Wednesday after flying in from northeast England — a journey that was roughly 18 hours long, they said. The reason behind the trek was simple – they love sports. Borthwick, who developed an interest in football when he lived in Washington D.C., said in the United Kingdom his Saturday afternoons are for soccer and Sunday afternoons for the NFL.
Entertainment spectacle
Even without a Swift appearance, the night contained entertainment elsewhere. For one, the Cowboys franchise — overlords of America’s Team and America’s Sweethearts — ran a tightly choreographed show per usual. The Rhythm & Blue hip-hop team entertained visitors on one concourse, with dancers moving to the uptempo beats of the team’s drumline.
Then, there was Malone’s halftime show. The Grapevine-raised singer, whose career was forged through a slew of hit rap and pop singles, has waded into country music in the last year with a 2024 album F-1 Trillion cementing the crossover.
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His set, short of 8 minutes, contained singles “Wrong Ones” and “I Had Some Help” off that project and a bluesy rendition of an older hit “Wow.”
“Post can do no wrong around here, I’m really not exaggerating,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said after the game, as he held up a turkey leg. “Post was a good show. He’s great. The main thing is our relationship with Post Malone is fitting. You guys know it but he literally did sleep on a cot for many years over at the old stadium. Now he’s the real deal now,” Jones continued, alluding to a time when a young Malone, then known as Austin Post, tagged along with his dad, a former Cowboys employee.
Staff Writer Calvin Watkins contributed to this report.
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