Dallas Cowboys fan: ‘This win was our destiny’

If the Dallas Cowboys were cursed in their own home stadium — as some fans thought when the squad won only half of its eight regular-season games there — the hex is broken.

Fans in the raucous, chock-full AT&T Stadium were treated on Sunday to an improbable, come-from-behind 24-20 victory over the Detroit Lions that kept them on their feet. As it ended, complete strangers high-fived and hugged each other.

“This win was our destiny,” Mario Dominguez of Laredo declared as he left the stadium. Dominguez, who traveled to North Texas for six football games this season, wore a predator mask over his face and playfully pretended to eat a stuffed lion.

Most of the 91,410 fans regularly waved white towels that were handed out at the game.

Not only was almost every seat sold out in the mammoth stadium, but several thousand people bought Party Passes and watched from the standing-room-only end zone decks. The crowd was so thick there that fans had to watch the game on the giant video monitors.

And it wasn’t just the paying customers celebrating each successful Cowboys play.

In section C207 on the second level of the stadium, Mansfield police officers at the game to work traffic control high-fived fans as the Cowboys took the lead in the fourth quarter. Then they went outside to finish working.

In the aisles, ushers high-fived passing fans as the Cowboys defense prevented Detroit from scoring in the visiting team’s final possession.

Before the game, several thousand fans lined the grassy parkways outside AT&T Stadium for hours, braving temperatures in the low to mid-30s to celebrate what many fans consider the Cowboys’ best chance at a Super Bowl run since the late 1990s. The team hasn’t been to the playoffs since 2009.

Henry Barrera of Lake Worth and about 20 of his good friends were tailgating, as they have at every Cowboys game this season.

“We’re going to go all the way!” Barrera yelled as he high-fived passers-by along Randol Mill Road in Arlington’s entertainment district.

Although some fans hanging around Barrera’s tailgating space intended to go inside the $1 billion-plus stadium, Barrera and a handful of friends said they would watch the game on a television outside.

About 99 percent of the tailgaters were Cowboys fans, and the occasional fans who walked by wearing Detroit Lions jerseys were catcalled unmercifully.

Tim Thomas and his grown son, Brett, traveled to Arlington from Windsor, Colo., about 50 miles north of Denver, to catch the game. The Thomases have been season ticket holders for many years, even though they typically can only travel to North Texas for a few games per season. They both lived in Mount Pleasant before moving to Colorado several years ago.

They weren’t bothered by the cold. While temperatures hovered around 35 degrees Sunday afternoon in Arlington, the high in Windsor was 19 — making the weather around the Cowboys game downright balmy in comparison.

“Even if it’s a little cool here, it’s hard to beat being out here,” said Tim Thomas, who works at JBS meat processing company.

Thomas also said that earlier in the year he bet another fan the Cowboys would win at least 10 games this year. They wound up winning 12 games, with only four losses, and dominated the National Football Conference East Division to qualify for the playoffs.

Thomas said the fan who lost the bet showed up in the stadium parking lot a few hours before the game and paid up.

This story was originally published January 4, 2015 at 4:32 PM with the headline "Dallas Cowboys fan: ‘This win was our destiny’."