Dallas Cowboys fans still have a few months left to worship their team at the famed Texas Stadium, but the days of free-for-all tailgating in the parking lots immediately surrounding Irving’s legendary landmark are already over.

DMN File

A Dallas Cowboys fan fires up his grill in Texas Stadium's blue parking lot. Team officials will be cracking down on where fans can tailgate during the upcoming season.

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Team officials are limiting which spaces in the blue lots — those outside the VIP lots — fans can use to tailgate. And they’re also cracking down on folks tailgating in several spots without paying for them.

Fans expressed mixed reactions. Some welcomed the changes, especially the renewed parking pass enforcement. A blue-lot parking pass costs $53 per game.

“They needed to do it because people were showing up an hour before game time and couldn’t find a parking spot because Mr. Corporate over here was taking up 15 parking spots with wedding tents and a hospitality table,” said longtime Cowboys fan Kenneth Melendez of Flower Mound.

Fan Susan Goforth suspects the motive is simply an attempt to generate more money.

“That’s crap,” she said of the policy, “especially with as much money as [team owner] Jerry Jones is getting.”

In any case, tailgaters trying to get a good spot at Thursday’s 7 o’clock game against Minnesota should leave early if they want one of the first-come, first-served blue lot spots. And North Texas drivers whose evening commute includes a drive by Texas Stadium be ready: The clamor for tailgating spots at last week’s pre-season home game is believed to have caused traffic to back up onto State Highway 114 hours before kickoff.

Tailgating in the eight blue lots is now allowed only in perimeter parking spots. Team officials do not know how many of the blue lots’ 6,464 parking spaces are on the perimeter. All interior blue-lot parking spots will be reserved for fans who want to park and head directly into the stadium. Fans parking in the green, gold and red lots, which are all farther from the stadium, can still tailgate wherever they want.

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A blue line in the Texas Stadium parking lot marks the border between the tailgating and non-tailgating areas.

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And those tailgating in the blue lots will be expected to stay inside new blue lines painted at the end of designated parking spots.

Cowboys Director of Public Relations Rich Dalrymple said it’s all an effort to keep the parking lots safer, use the spaces more efficiently and keep traffic flowing.

But Ms. Goforth said she’s never noticed such problems.

“I’ve never seen anybody get hurt, and I’ve been going out there for years,” she said.

Longtime tailgater Chuck Sharpe doesn’t think tailgating affects parking-lot traffic.

“There is no traffic because those people are there early, and they’re out of the way of any traffic,” he said.

Like Ms. Goforth, he suspects the changes are more about money than safety, efficiency or fairness.

“It’s a way to get people inside to buy the food and the alcohol — to do it inside instead of outside because I’m sure there’s a lot of money lost,” he said.

But Mr. Dalrymple said the changes are an attempt to get fans accustomed to the rules that will be in place when the Cowboys move to their mammoth new home in Arlington next season.

“The new policy was devised after we did extensive research of all the new NFL venues built recently,” Mr. Dalrymple said.

That doesn’t appease Mr. Sharpe, a longtime season ticket holder who bought four tickets to the new as-yet-unnamed stadium.

“I feel like I’m not honored in my loyalty,” he said.

Mr. Melendez said when he and his friends showed up to tailgate last week, there were non-tailgaters parked in the spots set aside for tailgating.

“We were looking at this line of cars and thinking, ‘How they’d get in here before us and why aren’t they tailgating?’.” he said. “And we look at the cars, and they had employee passes.”