When the mysterious “Project X” appeared on a Dallas City Council committee agenda in late March, we (along with a lot of other people) began guessing about who it involved. Council members were tight-lipped because the discussion involved attorneys and was held in closed session.
Maybe the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Sports Recruitment and Retention and the Council Economic Development Committee was discussing strategies to keep the Mavs in town past their 2030 lease end with American Airlines Center.
Or maybe Mayor Eric Johnson’s interest in the negotiations around the Kansas City Chiefs’ stadium in Kansas City was a Dallas Texans shaped clue.
And then the city announced that the Dallas Wings would move from Arlington to Dallas, where they will begin playing at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Memorial Arena after the 2025 season. That was surely Project X, right?
No. No it was not. The Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Sports Recruitment and Retention had another meeting about Project X last week. We confirmed then that Project X was not Wings-related. We entertained a few other potential theories — another MLS franchise, or maybe cricket.
But maybe our long local speculation is finally at an end. The Council is set to vote on a deal that would allow a new professional sports team to use the Cotton Bowl for its season, with the city providing an annual subsidy “not to exceed $296,000 per year” for the next two years to Fair Park First and operators Oak View Group for expenses related to accommodating the new team.
The resolution the Council will vote on doesn’t name the team, but the Dallas Morning News floated the idea that it was the Dallas franchise for a new women’s pro-soccer league—the USL Super League. Nobody would comment on the record, and when we asked the PR firm associated with the as-yet unnamed Dallas club if this was Project X and if the team would be calling the Cotton Bowl home, but they also could not confirm that Project X and the Dallas USL Super League team were one and the same.
“It’s my understanding that Project X has been used historically to refer to different projects through the years,” said Angela Lang with Tony Fay PR.
Here’s what we do know: