Last week, Atlético Dallas, a soccer club that is planning on debuting in the USL in 2027, announced that former Green Bay Packers wide receiver Terrence Murphy has joined the team’s ownership group as an investor. A Texas native, Murphy was drafted in the second round of the 2005 draft before medically retiring from the NFL due to a narrowing of his spine. During the 2007 season, Murphy returned to Green Bay as a coaching intern, but has since found success as an entrepreneur.
Now, he’s back in sports.
The United Soccer League Championship is the second division in the American soccer pyramid, only behind Major League Soccer. Over the next three years, the USL’s 24-team league will expand quickly, adding squads in Brooklyn, Jacksonville, Santa Barbara, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Dallas and Arkansas.
At the moment, only one USL team plays in a stadium with a capacity over 20,000: Birmingham Legion FC, which plays at UAB’s football field, Protective Stadium. They share that 47,100-seat stadium with the UFL’s Birmingham Stallions as well as the Birmingham Bowl.
But everything is bigger in Texas, right? Atlético Dallas is not only going to play in the largest stadium in the league, but they’re playing in a historic stadium with more than twice the capacity of anyone else: the Cotton Bowl. Beyond one-off bowls and rivalry games like the Red River Shootout, the only consistent tenants at the Cotton Bowl since FC Dallas left the stadium in 2005 have been the USLS’ Dallas Trinity FC, a women’s soccer team. Now, they’ll have a stadium partner in Atlético Dallas.
Here’s what Murphy had to say about the Cotton Bowl in an interview with the club’s website:
“The Cotton Bowl has a lot of history—just like Texas A&M. My senior year, we were able to accomplish a goal by being awarded the bid to play in the New Year’s Cotton Bowl Classic. It was something I always grew up watching, and it was a great experience to be able to play in one of the top bowls in college football.”
He’s also apparently doing very well in business:
“I started my first venture, TM5, and scaled it to $1.5B in sales in less than 8 years. That start-up company had offers to be acquired, which introduced me to M&A and Venture Capital Investing. I have recently surpassed these milestones in my career: $5B in sales and acquisitions, and I’ve built, acquired, or invested in 110 companies under the Terrence Murphy Companies portfolio.”
Good for Murphy. Hopefully, his team does well.