Tim Cowlishaw

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ARLINGTON – In cutting the regular-season ribbon on a stadium that is all about size, maybe Cowboys owner Jerry Jones should have thought twice about hosting a team called Giants.

Not every game at Cowboys Stadium is going to produce crowds on the high side of 100,000 or ex-presidents flipping coins or kings (as in LeBron James) watching from luxury suites.

And if Tony Romo has anything to say about it, there won't be another game like this for some time.

Ultimately, New York's Lawrence Tynes had to kick a 37-yard field goal to make the Giants 33-31 winners over Dallas on Sunday night.

This game being all about excess, Tynes actually had to kick it twice since the Cowboys called timeout just before the first, but no matter.

The party ended at 10:47 p.m. the same way all great, oversized parties do.

With the hosts thinking, "We've got a mess to clean up here."

The Cowboys were the better running team in their home debut, but the Giants were the far superior passing team. The deciding factor without question was the Cowboys losing the turnover battle, 4-0.

Romo threw three interceptions as the Giants returned to the spot they owned at the end of the 2008 season, the spot Jones covets so badly.

The top of the NFC East.

If anyone in this country had somehow failed to get word over the years that Texans are unfamiliar with the concepts of "too big" or "too much," the debut of the stadium took care of all that.

Ten-gallon hats and the late Farrah Fawcett's famous hair are examples of how to do things on a small scale compared to this place.

Sunday night's game brought in a crowd of 105,121, the largest ever to witness an NFL game played in the United States.

There was a 100-yard American flag unfurled beneath the 60-yard long scoreboard for the Star-Spangled Banner. Ring of Honor members were recognized at halftime as Rayfield Wright and Emmitt Smith stood 90 yards apart with a dozen more Hall of Famers or regular Pro Bowlers stretched in between.

Big crowd, big flag, big stars, big closeups of Cowboys cheerleaders, biggest end-zone party areas ever imagined – with all of that in mind, it had to be a game that featured big plays.

It did not fail in that respect, even if the Cowboys did.

Romo never could have guessed that the recipient of his first touchdown pass in Jones' tribute to wretched excess would be Bruce Johnson.

Neither could have the Giants.

Johnson is an undrafted rookie free agent from the University of Miami, who would not have been on the field in third-down situations if not for key injuries in the New York secondary.

His 34-yard interception return for a touchdown was one of three Cowboys' turnovers in the opening half. Romo was intercepted again when a pass Jason Witten couldn't handle bounced off his heel and into the arms of safety Kenny Phillips to set up a Giants' touchdown.

Felix Jones also lost a fumble in the first half as New York, with all of 12 yards on the ground in 11 tries after 30 minutes, held a bizarre 20-17 halftime lead.

But Jones and Barber got the Cowboys going in the second half. Although the passing game never really clicked the way it did at Tampa Bay, Jones and Barber totaled 220 on the ground.

It was Jones' touchdown, a 7-yard run through the middle set up by Barber's 35-yard scamper, that gave Dallas a 31-30 lead with 3:40 to play.

That was far too much time to leave for Eli Manning and a Giants passing game that had shredded the Dallas secondary all night. Manning converted two key third-down passes on the drive as New York moved from its 15 to the Cowboys' 19-yard line.

Tynes, who had missed one of his first four field goal attempts, did not struggle to hit the game-winner.

People will marvel at this stadium again and the Cowboys will grab another huge prime-time audience when they host Carolina next Monday.

But as Jones said last week, you only get one chance in life to open a brand new stadium.

The NFL's newest and biggest is officially open.

And yet the 1-1 Cowboys looked a lot like the talented but flawed team that left Irving on a sour note in search of answers last December.