Is Jerry Jones Dallas' Mr. Burns?

Being both a remorseless Simpsons nerd and a native Dallasite, I've always secretly compared Jerry Jones to the elderly, and comically evil Mr. Burns. It certainly seems an apt comparison: Mr. Burns has the town of Springfield under his thumb via a power plant; Jerry has the city of Dallas under his thumb via a beloved football team.

Mr. Burns has the sycophantic yes-man Waylon Smithers; Jerry has the sycophantic yes-man Wade Phillips.

Jones has Cowboys Stadium. Burns has the Monty Burns Casino, the Lil' Lisa Recycling Plant and, of course, the Nuclear Power Plant.

Both are exceedingly wealthy and vaguely oblivious old men, and, according to a recent report, both share the dubious label of environmental offender. Burns' power plant is responsible for three-eyed fish and squirrels with laser eyes. Jerry's fancy new stadium is described, in the title of the aforementioned article as "a reminder of how to waste energy." No word as of yet if Jerry World will spawn mutant-critters, but the report, published on powermanagementdesignline.com, comes as a scathing indictment of the beast-structure, describing it as "jaw-dropping--and not in a good way."

"The bottom line is this stadium is just a symbol of excess," the article says. "There is no discernible reason that a football stadium should be using as much energy as a city when it will be used as rarely as this stadium. Onsite renewable energy was probably never considered."

The article goes on to hypothesize that, in a given month, the stadium will use about as much energy as the city of Santa Monica, California. Texas-sized indeed.

This seems to fly in the face of the stadium's stated green-initiatives, which according to the piece, "include reducing solid waste by 25 percent, cutting energy use by 20 percent and saving 1 million gallons of water annually compared to what would be produced were green measure not in place."

I would like to approach Jerry at his home to ask him about this seeming disconnect in words and practice. But I know he'd just release the hounds.

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