You might think of AT&T Stadium as a modern-day Coliseum, where the greatest athletes of our age display their manhoods.

LastCallTexas, however, looks at it as if it were a $1.2 billion Petri dish, where we can study consumers like rhesus monkeys on heroin pipes.

Experiment 1: Do the Blue Boys need to win to make Jerry Jones an even richer Texan?

As the graphic above shows, NO.

Hence, when life form Kellen Moore leads the team to a 16-19 loss to the New York Jets, team owner/multi-cell organism Jerry Jones is selling just as much (if not more) Miller Lite and Cowboyritas, as when Tony Romo is in full Jedi mode.

Well, that concludes our … . What? You, in the back, with your hand up. You had a question?

No, the increase in per-fan sales in 2009 has little to do with the team’s performance. Weren’t you listening? Put your hand down. You raised a good question for our second experiment.

Experiment 2: Why are monkeys spending more money on booze at Jerry World?

In 2009, we introduced the same test group to a facility that was three (3) times more spacious and cost $1.2 billion to build. We added two (2) BIG screens and ladies who wear little black dresses while walking in the fancy seats. They looked very nice, smiled, and asked people if they would care for a cocktail. Also introduced was a place where subjects couldn’t sit down or see much of the game, but they could drink. And they did. Mostly Miller Lite.

Shortly after these new variables were added, subject Jones saw a 20 percent bump in per-fan beer, wine and liquor sales revenue, per home season. Next thing, the place sells more hooch than anywhere else in Texas.

Some professors at the University of Minnesota, including marketing professor Joan Meyers-Levy, looked into the bigger-space phenomenon and drew an interesting conclusion: Wider-open spaces encourage consumers to spend more. (Of course there are other factors, such as a wider selection of beverages, more places to buy them, but let’s look at the “bigger” phenomenon in this case.)

“Ceiling height can prime thoughts that relate to the concept of freedom,” says the study, published in 2007. That sense of freedom, the study showed, liberated test subjects’ wallets right out of their pants to spend more on goods than they would have otherwise.

The thought that higher ceiling height and more open space create a sense of well-being, liberty and clearer thinking goes all the way back to an observation made by Jonas Salk, who was trying to cure polio in a basement lab in Pittsburgh in the 1950s (not kidding). It wasn’t until he traveled to Assisi, Italy, and spent time in an expansive monastery when he came up with how to cure polio.

Only we’re not trying to cure polio, here. Just trying to unload more Miller Lite in aluminum bottles.

Back to Meyer-Levy’s study, which showed that raising the roof also convinced experiment subjects that even crude things looked sleeker.

An even closer look at those findings and the chart shows that Jerry Jones and his architects are marketing geniuses, and that the Dallas Cowboys will win the Super Bowl next season (see nonexistent footnote below).