Who Needs Turf at Cowboys Stadium When You've Got A PlayStation?

By Patrick Michels in Sports

Sunday, Aug. 9 2009 @ 7:41PM

Patrick Michels

Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for.

​Check out our slide show for more shots from the tournament and around the stadium.

It was a moment you knew was coming ever since the Cowboys unveiled the largest-in-the-world 1080p HDTV screen hanging above midfield in their new stadium.

Saturday afternoon at an open house for Cowboys season ticket holders, Sony held a Madden NFL 2010 tournament -- the game's due in stores a little over a week from now -- played on the 10-story Mitsubishi screen, even as workers finished laying down the numbers marking yardage on the field below.

Patrick Michels

While players watched their game from a smaller screen down below, everyone else had to look up.

​"Most of the folks here are both hardcore gaming fans and Cowboys fans," Sony spokeswoman Crystal Braswell said, and, indeed, many of the games on the big screen were Cowboys-Cowboys match-ups.

Gamers could earn a place in the tourney ahead of time by submitting a photo of themselves doing a touchdown dance involving a PlayStation, and a few more competitors were picked in a drawing at the stadium Saturday. Out of a field of 256 players, the winner took home a PS3 and a copy of the new Madden game.

Two-hundred and fifty six players entered the tournament, which ran for about five hours. At 3 p.m., winners of a side tournament had the chance to take on a real-life Cowboy, the now-retired Raghib "Rocket" Ismail, at another PlayStation setup on the side of the Sony trailer parked on the field.

While the season ticket holders milling around the stands paid spotty attention to the tournament, it did produce at least one notable stat: "It's technically the first football game to be played at Cowboys Stadium," Braswell noted.

Patrick Michels

Wide receiver "Rocket" Ismail was the only Cowboy who played on the day of the stadium's first football game.

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