Dallas Cowboys fans didn’t totally sellout to San Francisco 49ers faithful | Opinion

The call to arms from the Dallas Cowboys to their ticket-paying customers was neither a failure, nor was it a success.

Call this one a draw, which, for the Cowboys, was a win.

Of the dozens of story lines entering the Cowboys’ NFC wild card playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday at AT&T Stadium was the crowd — not if it would be a sellout, but if the Dallas Cowboys fans themselves would.

A lot of them did, it would appear. But most of them didn’t.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said during the week he wanted 100,000 in attendance at the game. The Cowboys fans, unlike the team, showed up on time.

With the price of tickets no longer in the stratosphere but the stupidsphere, thousands of Cowboys’ fans (wisely) made a business decision on Sunday.

But this was a hard business decision.

With the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeating the Philadelphia Eagles early Sunday afternoon, the chances the Cowboys would host another NFC playoff game became really slim.

The prices in the secondary market for a ticket to this game was akin to Elvis Presley coming back from the dead for a one-night-only show. (Of course, this does assume you are dumb enough to believe Elvis is actually dead.)

One 49ers fan I talked to paid $600 for a lower-level seat, to sit by himself. BTW, mad respect for the fan who attends a sporting event in the opponent’s house by themselves. Now, that’s real courage.

The good news for the Cowboys is that Sunday was not a repeat of their home game against the 49ers in Week 1 of the 2014 season when there were so many opposing fans at JerryWorld it quickly went from awkward to embarrassing.

According to the always reliable eye-ball test, Sunday’s game looked to 25 percent-ish of the more than 92,000 in attendance were 49ers fans.

Included in the attendance was NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, and Buffalo Bills receiver Stefon Diggs, whose brother is Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs.

(This means Stefon, after defeating the New England Patriots in Buffalo on Saturday night in the AFC wild card game, boarded a private plane on Sunday to arrive in time for kickoff.)

Twenty five percent, or so, is not ideal.

When the 49ers were gashing their way down the field in the first quarter, there was an audibly San Francisco sound to JerryWorld.

With a stadium as large as AT&T, all of this has to be acceptable.

The one scenario Jones and the entire franchise was desperate to avoid were plays where the home team had to go to a silent count.

The Cowboys avoided that humiliation, which the L.A. Rams did not in their regular-season finale against the visiting 49ers last week.

When quarterback Dak Prescott threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to receiver Amari Cooper in the second quarter, the place sounded like a Dallas Cowboys home game.

Going into the game, there was well-founded concern that AT&T Stadium was going to look, and sound, a little bit like Levi’s Stadium, the 49ers’ home venue.

Despite some pockets of 49ers’ red and gold, more Dallas Cowboys fans did not sellout for their team to have a sellout.