Vain Glory
It’s his team and he can do what he wants. And what Jerry Jones wants to do most is prove he can win without Jimmy Johnson.
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Switzer, as assistant coach at Arkansas in the sixties, recalled Jerry Jones as “a try-hard guy . . . exactly as you see him today . . . a total extrovert, a promoter, a salesman who could look you in the eye and talk right through you.” Jones and Johnson both played for some of the finest coaches in America, including Switzer, Frank Broyles, Jim MacKenzie, Doug Dickie, Hayden Fry, and Johnny Majors. Jones told me, “The things I was exposed to and learned playing football were more fundamental to my makeup than all the things I have been exposed to or learned since that time. I am fundamentally sound in my business and my philosophy because of what I learned playing football.”
By the time Jerry had graduated from college, Pat Jones was in the insurance business and owned five companies. Jerry worked for one of the companies while he was in college, and after his graduation in 1965, he took over as executive vice president of his father’s flagship company, Modern Security Life Insurance. But Jerry still had football on his mind. A year later, at age 22, he almost bought the San Diego Chargers of the American Football League. He had the necessary financing—$5.8 million—but backed out at the last minute because the debt seemed so staggering. This turned out to be a costly mistake. A year later, when the AFL merged with the NFL, the Chargers franchise sold for $11 million.
By the mid-seventies, Jerry was a major player in oil and gas, banking, real estate, and various other businesses, a millionaire many times over and a behind-the-scenes power in Arkansas politics. He kept a low profile until the eighties, when the now infamous Arkla gas deal brought him both controversy and millions of bucks. In 1982 Jerry bought a half interest in some gas leases from Arkla, a utility then headed by an old friend, Sheffield Nelson. The contract obligated the utility to buy almost all the gas that Jones’s company produced—at $3 per thousand cubic feet, far above the market rates, which in the glut of the mid-eighties dropped as low as 16 cents. A lawsuit filed on behalf of the ratepayers by Fayetteville attorney Tom Mars charged that Jones and Nelson had cooked up a sweetheart deal. As part of a settlement, Arkla ended up refunding $13.7 million to ratepayers. The Arkla scandal became a bitter campaign issue in the 1990 Arkansas gubernatorial race, in which Sheffield Nelson lost to Bill Clinton. Jones eventually sold his interest for a profit that Forbes estimated at $140 million—the same amount he paid for the Cowboys. Jones scoffs at the suggestion that he bought the team with his Arkla profits. “That $140 million figure isn’t close to being accurate,” he told me. “The profit I made on Arkla wouldn’t have paid for Troy Aikman’s contract, and I’m talking about the first one [for $11 million], not the $50 million he signed last year.” Tom Mars, who was Jerry’s bitter enemy during the lawsuit, is now a Cowboy’s fan and a Jones admirer. “We never claimed that Jones had done anything illegal or inappropriate,” Mars said. “He was legally and morally obligated to look out for Jerry Jones, not the ratepayers. In hindsight, I concede that he made a very shrewd business deal.”
In the five years that he has owned the franchise, Jones has recovered all but $25 million of his initial investment. Moreover, the Cowboys now are worth an estimated $190 million, making it the most valuable franchise in sports. When Jerry bought the team, only 6 of the 118 luxury suites at Texas Stadium were leased. Jones has expanded the number of suites to 368, and most of them are taken through the year 2008, at prices of up to $2 million. Local advertising revenue now totals $15 million to $20 million a year, about ten times what it was when he bought the team. The Cowboys have sold out every home game since the season opener of 1990.
Jones has not just remade the Cowboys, he has become one of the most influential owners in the NFL, the leader of a clique of younger executives who are reshaping league policy. “Jerry Jones has brought a different mind-set to the league, in that he is not afraid to operate his team as a business,” said Lamar Hunt, the Dallas oilman who owns the Kansas City Chiefs and was one of the founders of the AFL. “His hands-on approach is unique, different from that of any other owner I know of. We need more of that and less of the owners who never come around or take an interest in their teams. I can name you several owners who haven’t been to a league meeting in years.” One of the revolutionary ideas that Jones has championed is the salary cap, which the owners got as a trade-off for free agency with the NFL Players Association. Though the $34.6 million cap kicked in only this year, it’s already apparent that the players got snookered. A few players are going to become very rich, at the expense of the vast majority.
Jones’s bottom-line philosophy probably has made more enemies than friends. He faces several lawsuits from fans, disgruntled by a variety of complaints, ranging from insufficient parking for the handicapped to the loss of seats by longtime season-ticket holders, who had to make way for the additional luxury suites. But the move that has established Jones as one of the most ruthless and dispassionate owners in sports was the lawsuit that he filed in January to recover money that sixteen former Cowboys had received for permanent disabilities from workers’ compensation settlements. In some cases, the funds were designated for future surgeries. For example, former receiver Mike Renfro received a settlement of $22,000 to be used for a plastic right knee joint and a new left shoulder. What makes this lawsuit seem particularly cold-blooded is that fifteen of the sixteen played before Jones owned the team: He never paid a penny of their salaries or insurance premiums. Moreover, the players that Jones picked on were, first of all, low-salaried journeymen—Hall of Famers Randy White and Tony Dorsett could have been included in the suit but were not—and second, players who were experiencing acute financial problems. When two of the former Cowboys were discovered to have filed for bankruptcy, Jones’s lawyers asked for injunctions to prevent settlement funds from being used to pay for “the necessities of life,” contending that Jerry Jones would otherwise suffer “irreparable injury.” This is a highly complicated lawsuit, reflecting change in insurance regulations and the Cowboys’ future obligations in permanent disability cases. Jones said that the purpose of the lawsuit isn’t to prevent former players from receiving new shoulders and knees but to establish a precedent. “In the future, these funds will have to come out of the salary cap,” he told me. Dallas attorney Steve Carlin, one of the lawyers representing the former players, sees it in a harsher light. “The money here is the value of Mike Renfro’s knee and shoulder. Jones is saying that he owns these players, or at least owns parts of their bodies.”
Saying that Jerry Jones is not a football guy makes as much sense as saying Tex Schramm was not a football guy. Neither of these Cowboys general managers was especially conversant with the X’s and O’s, but each had a pair of Lombardi Trophies on the shelf—and Jerry collected his in just five years. Jones isn’t destroying the Cowboys, he’s making them leaner and more fit to survive the rigors of the future. More than any other owner, Jones anticipated the salary cap. In the past year the Cowboys have re-signed Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Daryl Johnston to the largest contracts ever paid to their respective positions. Eight of Dallas’ eleven Pro Bowl players have been retained—the only exceptions being linebacker Ken Norton and safety Thomas Everett, who were deemed expendable, and center Mark Stepnoski, who hasn’t yet signed his 1994 contract but probably will remain in Dallas. The Cowboys have lost some players to free agency but so have the other 27 teams. “Don’t look at what we lost,” Jones said. “Look at what we kept.”
And look at what the Cowboys got. Barry Switzer, who won three national championships at Oklahoma, was at least as good of a college coach as Jimmy Johnson, who won one at Miami—probably even better. There is no reason to think he won’t do as well in the pros. The Cowboys retain the same system, the same assistant coaches, and essentially the same group of players. And don’t forget the owner and general manager. Jerry Jones counts too. As the world is quickly learning.
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