Texas in particular come off looking compartively great. Dallas-Fort Worth has the second-biggest gain in jobs during the last year (among the nation’s 100 biggest markets), the fourth-most gain in the last five years, and the fifth-most in the last 10 years. (Houston finishes No. 1 on all three lists.)  Of course, the picture is slightly different if you rank cities by their percentage gains in jobs, with DFW ranked 10th, 8th, and 27th looked at that way.

Only 13 of the top 100 U.S. metropolitan areas have showed a gain over the last five years. Six of them are in Texas.

Portlandia is ranked No. 52.

Sitting, as I was, in a living a room amidst the exurban sprawl of Frisco on Sunday, that comment stung. I mean, he wasn’t talking about North Texas, and yet he was.

And Michaels isn’t alone. Indianapolis is getting rave reviews for its hosting of the NFL’s championship extravaganza. Having been blessed with unseasonably pleasant weather this year (as opposed to the ice and snow we greeted fans with in Dallas for Super Bowl XLV), there’s already speculation about how soon the capital of Indiana will get to host another. It’s very unlike the “Will North Texas Ever Get to Host Another?” headlines that followed our region’s turn.

Much of the praise for Indy is about its compactness. Whereas North Texas had some activities in Fort Worth, others in Dallas, and the game in Arlington, with driving required to get anywhere, Indianapolis was walkable. Sports economist Patrick Rishe wrote a column for Forbes yesterday where he noted that “Bigger is not always better” — another slap in the face of Texas?

And most importantly for many sports spectators be they corporate or common Joe…you can freely imbibe and then simply stumble back to your hotel room …

The proximity between the stadium, the hotels, and the entertainment amenities shot the convenience quotient for out-of-town visitors through the roof…with the most taxing commutes of Super Bowl XLVI week in Indy being the 7 miles to either the Indianapolis Airport or driving north to either Broad Ripple’s entertainment district or to Butler University to catch a Bulldog basketball game.

Mac Engel of the Star-Telegram called Rishe and got him to make a head-to-head comparison:

“What happened last year in North Texas was so unfortunate because that was a situation where it could have worked,” he said in a phone interview. “You have things in Fort Worth and things in Dallas that make it an attractive destination. But Indianapolis proved that it’s not a detriment at all to have everything in one spot. It can be a real positive.”

Engel’s suggestion is that the next North Texas bid sell Fort Worth’s downtown as being as compact as Indy’s and to use it as the base for most of the activities (aside from the game, of course). A Fort Worth CVB representative points out that the city would need another major hotel to make that feasible, but never mind that, Engel writes:

Because a large, vibrant downtown on Randol Mill Road in Arlington is not a realistic possibility, and downtown Dallas remains primarily a financial district, the best alternative is here in Cowtown.

Most of these assessments of which region did a better job hosting, though, ignore what is likely the NFL’s bottom line. Where did they make more money?

Lucas Oil Stadium, the host on Sunday, accommodates about 70,000 people for the game. Cowboys Stadium can cram in more than 100,000.  Walkability be damned, they’re not going to ignore all that extra cash, are they?

The guys who came up with the greatest time-waster known to man, Words With Friends, had the best moment in this Best Buy ad, tweaking the recent Alec Baldwin-American Airlines brouhaha over playing the game on the plane. They show up at about the 30-second mark.   Rating: 9 out of 10

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban makes a cameo at the end of this Skechers ad.  Unfortunately, the line they gave him falls flat.  Rating: 4 out of 10

Deion Sanders shows up at about the 11-second mark in this Century 21 ad, having baked cookies for his open house.  Apparently he’s still having trouble selling his “$21 million” home in Prosper?  It’s solid work on his part.  Rating: 7 out of 10

And we got a double dip of Deion from this Bridgestone Tire commercial, where he tries to receive a pass from another Dallas Cowboys great, Troy Aikman.  Troy doesn’t get to do much, but Deion again gets to show how his “Primetime” skills.  Rating:  6 out of 10

It's good to be Mark Cuban.

I’m a fan of the ABC show Shark Tank, in which entrepreneurs ask for investments from a group of venture capitalists (the “Sharks.”)  Some of the business ideas are great (like the “Netflix for kids’ toys”) but others seem to be ideas that the producers only allowed to get on the air because they’re so laughable.

During the second season Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made several appearances, and in this current season he’s become a regular. At first I found him to be a nice addition, but his celebrity power — he’s by far the most famous of the “Sharks” — is killing the game of it.  Entrepreneurs seem to get weak-kneed when they see Cuban, and they’re willing to accept lesser deals from him (rather than a better deal from another Shark) just for the chance to continue to bask in the glow of his star power. The playing field is tilted in his favor.

Also, on last week’s show, he invested in a website where a guy will draw a cat for you for $10.  The idea was worth a good laugh on TV, but I thought surely the Sharks would say thanks-but-no-thanks.  Cuban put $25,000 into this “business.” He said he was investing more in the guy himself than in the cat-drawing enterprise.

And because of Cuban’s star power?  TMZ says the cat-drawing website has gotten over a thousand orders in a few days, when it had been averaging fewer than 40 in a week.  Cuban tells TMZ he is “fired up.”  Basically he thinks he’s found himself the next Cosmo Kramer.

Mr. Cuban, I will sell you 33% of any of the following ideas in exchange for $25,000:

1) “I Will Draw You a Rabbit.” — Cats are over. Rabbits are the future.

2) FurryBook — Social networking site for the “Furry” community.

3) ToastFlex (Netflix For Toasters) — If you’re like me, you get tired of using the same toaster every day. But who can afford to keep up by constantly buying the latest bread-roasting technology?

4) Gaggle —  A search engine specifically geared towards all your goose-related searches. Just type any phrase in the Gaggle box, and it will automatically append the words “goose,” “geese,” or “gander” onto your query. It may seem as though it saves only seconds off your typical search, but, over the course of a lifetime, our calculations show that those seconds will total nearly three full years of life for the average person.  (Note: Study results assume the average person is a goose or poultry fetishist.)

5) How to Improve the NBA —  Everyone knows you don’t have to watch anything more than the last few minutes of a typical professional basketball game. Few contests are decided before that point, and those that are are dull blowouts. Plus, no one likes to watch teams dragging out the last minute of play by intentionally fouling on the off-chance that turning it into a free-throw contest will turn the tide. The solution? Simple: The end of NBA games should no longer be determined by the clock. The first team to 90 points wins, period. Or 95. Or 85. Or whatever. You can work out the details.  I’m just the idea man.

Watch Cuban continue to big-foot around the Shark Tank when the show airs at 7 p.m. tonight.

I’ll briefly paraphrase Komen President Elizabeth Thompson, responding to questions from reporters: “Investigation?” Did we say “investigation?” No, we meant, um, that other thing anti-abortion people are saying, that Planned Parenthood doesn’t have on-sight mammograms. Or they aren’t good enough. Something like that. Abortions? Oh, we didn’t even realize that was the same Planned Parenthood. Nope, that had nothing to do with it. What’s that, we also pulled funding for stem cell research that was working toward a cure? Total coincidence. Hey, isn’t the Super Bowl soon? We know how you folks like to watch football! Why don’t you go over there and rest until the game starts.

UPDATE 10:36: read a public statement (apology) from Nancy Brinker, and a response from Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards here.

The Dallas-Fort Worth drought ended just in time to greet the first Emirates flight from Dubai. Photography by Jeanne Prejean

The Eagle, er, the Emirates, has landed. At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, at about 8:45 this morning, to great fanfare — as shown in the photo above of the so-called “shower of affection” that was accorded the Boeing 777-200LR aircraft upon touchdown. (”Shower of affection” means something else where I come from, but apparently this is an aviation ritual.) The plane had left Dubai about 16 hours earlier, becoming Emirates Airline’s first-ever daily, non-stop flight to D/FW. It was scheduled to turn around and head back to the United Arab Emirates a couple of hours later.

United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba

As part of the inaugural hullabaloo, various government and airline officials cut a cake, said “Howdy” a lot, and gave each other gifts. Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price handed Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United States, her black cowboy hat. When the ambassador (they actually call him “Excellency”) put it on, he joked, “I’m gonna get shot when I get back to D.C.” That was an apparent reference to the Cowboys-Redskins rivalry (we think).

The officials also said that Texas is the U.S. leader in exports to the UAE, accounting for $2 billion of the $16 billion that’s logged annually. That figure, they added, is sure to increase with the new service to Dubai, which in turn will offer flyers connections to many more destinations in the Middle East, Africa and the Indian Subcontinent.

At that they opened up the 777 for a quick tour, showing off the plane’s gourmet grub, red-capped flight attendants (see below), all-class entertainment system (100 TV channels, 500 audio channels, 100 video games, etc., at each screen), and luxury seating. At each of the “lie-flat” beds in Business Class, for example, rose petals had been strewn, and one immaculate little pair of white “sleeping socks” had been set out. The 777 seats 266 passengers in all, eight in private suites with their own bar.

The plane's first-class "private suite." The Pringles are complimentary (we hope).

According to Nigel Page, Emirates’ senior VP for commercial operations, the new service is expected to produce an economic impact of $227 million on North Texas annually. He said that today’s flight from Dubai had been at 76 percent of capacity, that the return flight would be 100 percent full, and that he expected all the airline’s daily flights to average 75 percent capacity in the early going.

This DFW Airport Ambassador (left) seems a tad wary of the brightly smiling Emirates Airlines flight attendant.

Pavestone and the Canadian-born Schlegel took a roundabout route to the Quikrete buy. In 2008 the Federal Trade Commission blocked Pavestone’s proposed sale to another Atlanta company called Oldcastle Architectural, on antitrust grounds. Two years later Schlegel sold half of Pavestone to Oklahoma Publishing Co., which in turn was snapped up last year by an outfit controlled by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz. When the Anschutz deal happened Schlegel says he exercised his “right of first refusal” and bought back Oklahoma Publishing’s half of Pavestone, giving him 100 percent ownership again. Asked what he’ll do now, Schlegel says he retained one $20 million division of the company — something called Bedrock Logistics — and will concentrate on growing that.

The new director is married, by the way, to the beautiful, Houston-reared actress/entrepreneur Jacqueline Buckingham Anderson, who’s likely to give Anna-Sophia a run for her money as a head-turner on the social circuit. Just now Jacqueline — who literally does hail from central casting — is said to be overseeing the building of a new home for the Andersons in Preston Hollow. (She’s had practice at such things, having “redecorated” the couple’s 12,000-square-foot, museum-provided residence in Indy with buying trips to California and Europe, according to the NYT). According to John Eagle, president of the DMA board, she may eventually start her own business here putting art into public or corporate spaces like hospitals.