Jerry Jones

Love him or hate him, you have to give him props. The man's got balls.

Bought the Dallas Cowboys 20 years ago for a mere $140 million, now according to Forbes - it is worth a cool $1.65 billion.

Yep, that's right billion with a B.

Sure back in 1989, I fucking hated the man. As a life long Cowboys fan, his first move as the new owner was to fire one of the most successful coaches in the history of the NFL, and push out the general manager that built the Cowboys from scratch into America's Team.

Sure, there were a couple of down years, okay - a decade of down years (3 consecutive NFC Championship losses in the early 80's - unless you are a Bills fan or an Eagles fan, those are failures in my book), both Tom Landry and Tex Schramm deserved better.

But give Jerry credit, he saw that time and the NFL game had past the two by, and it was time for something new.

His next move, was to hire a college coach with zero professional experience to take the reins of the Cowboys. The pair them promptly traded away Hershel Walker - who accounted for 65% of the offense for the mediocre on their best day Cowboys.

What was that like for a Cowboys fan? I wanted to fucking kill both Jones and Johnson. For the love of Christ how in the fucking world do you trade away the guy who IS your offense in the middle of your season??!!

A few years later, the move proved to be the very reason that the Cowboys took home the Lombardi Trophy 3 years out of four. In fact, it was such a great move, Johnson called it "the Great Train Robbery".

The next few years that followed after the Cowboys won the first Superbowl in the 90's, I would give Jones a B+ on his achievements. The bad - he drove off the coach that won him the Superbowls mainly because he didn't want to share the spotlight with him. The good? He broke with the NFL/NFL PA in the merchandising front.

Not many of us remember that Monday night game in New York with Jerry Jones walked onto the Giants Stadium turf with Nike Founder Phil Knight to announce the deal that the Cowboys had struck with Nike to brand Texas Stadium with Nike logos. But that was a revolutionary move for the NFL.

Up until then, all the franchises in the NFL shared the merchandise revenue equally. It doesn't matter if your team sucked and you as a owner can barely remember the address of your stadium, or you as an owner spent every waking hour trying to improve your team - you shared the revenue equally. All those Emmit Smith jerseys that were sold? Every team in the damn league gets a piece of that action.

In political circles, that's what is known as communism. With one bold move, Jerry Jones changed all of that. Why the hell should Jerry and the Cowboys share the money he earned by being the most popular franchise in football with the perennial bottom feeders who refuse to improve their team?


At first, there were only a few owners who saw the light. Al Davis, who was just happy to have someone else being labeled as "maverick owner" besides his Darth Vader self; and Bob Kraft. That's right, Bob Kraft; he saw back then the smart money was the opportunity to shed the dead weight of the layabout owners and market your own team - if you can keep most of the fruits of your labor.

Now after several years, guess what happened. Everyone is on board now as the NFL became the most successful professional league in the world. Everyone is richer, and everyone is happy (except Al Davis, who is still unable to expand his merchandising demographics from LA gang members and frustrated by his apparent inability to hire coaches who doesn't punch fellow employees).

Fast forward a few years to the current time. Midst of a recession, Jones is set to open his 1.2 billion dollar football stadium.

Prices too high in a recession? Nope, the stadium is almost sold out, including the luxury boxes and even with the personal licenses for season tickets and corporate sponsorships.

Worried that the higher ticket prices will only bring in the "well-heeled" crowd who will not make the place a living nightmare for visiting teams? In addition to the 72,000 people the seats and the suites will hold, Jone is selling an additional 30,000 $29 "party passes" that will let the fans stand in the decks and buy Jerry's beer and hot dogs. This is just brilliant, simply brilliant. You know all those rowdy bleacher crowd you see in baseball parks? Jones just created an opportunity for 30,000 rowdies to enter the stadium at $29 a pop to move around and do their thing.


Worried that the planet's biggest HDTV (which sits 90' - 9 stories to you and I, above the stadium surface) will interfere with playing football? Get the NFL to amend/clarify the rule. In the mean time, everyone is talking about the new Texas Stadium.

As Michael Silver suggested, I am thankful for the Jones owning the Cowboys.

20 years later, I will own up to Jerry - I was wrong.