Next time you have a chance to talk to your NFL team’s owner, pose them this question: Would you want to win a Super Bowl if it meant you could never speak on a microphone again?
Thirty-one of the NFL’s franchise owners (and ownership groups) would take that deal in a heartbeat. One wouldn’t, under any circumstances. And you already know who that one is.
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Jerry Jones requires no introduction, mainly because he’s spent the past four decades making damn sure you know who he is. Jones stars this week in a new Netflix series — “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys” — and puts himself front and center every news cycle in his longstanding role as owner and emperor of the Dallas Cowboys.
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Jones relishes his “gambler” persona, ladling on the mythmaking and the tall tales until it’s impossible to tell what’s fact and what’s hyperbole. Where does the cow end and the cow pies begin? At this point, even Jones himself probably doesn’t know.
What’s indisputable is this: the Arkansas oilman has turned two all-in wagers into galactic-class payoffs. And he now presides over the most valuable brand in American sports, and one of the most recognizable on the planet. Seasons come and seasons go — 29 of them now without a Dallas title — but the Cowboys’ aura glows brighter with every passing one.
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If all you’re focused on with Jones and the Cowboys is the on-field results, you’re missing the bigger picture here. Which, as every veteran poker player knows, is how you eventually get cleaned out.
“America’s Team” is, in so many ways, the embodiment of Jones’ outsize ego and persona. The eight-part documentary begins with the vibe of a Taylor Sheridan series like “Yellowstone” and “Landman” — sweeping billionaire’s-eye views from the window of a helicopter. Jones craftily recounts his early days as an Arkansas oilman — “I was really good at drilling oil wells, and I was really good at borrowing money” — and uses his first big gamble as a pretext to his most important one.
According to the biography — or the myth, take your pick — Jones, as a young oilman from Arkansas, spent $800,000 on a well that returned $100 million, a payoff he now says saved him from ruin. The parallel to his purchase of the Cowboys is obvious: The “country bumpkin” turned a $150 million purchase of the Cowboys into an investment now valued at almost $13 billion.
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The important element to remember about Jones is that he hasn’t really “gambled” with the Cowboys in any real sense since he orchestrated a surge from an initial 1-15 season to three Super Bowl titles in the 1990s. Those early days were treacherous, true, and Jimmy Johnson deserves at least as much credit as Jones for building the Cowboys into world-beaters. But since then, Jones has engaged not in gambling, but in investment protection.
Jones’ early stroke of genius was to build the Cowboys into Greek gods, men so dedicated to greatness that they risked concussions for first downs (Michael Irvin) or divorced their wives (Johnson). Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Deion Sanders … these were the giants of the 1990s NFL, and Jones made sure he was always standing right alongside them.
Off the field, Jones turned the Cowboys into a behemoth, striking brand and licensing arrangements that ensured Dallas was always in the conversation every time the NFL was. He ensured that there were no mild feelings about Dallas, and that’s why you’ve seen the Cowboys dominating prime time even when they were struggling to break .500. He embodied the old rule of PR: It doesn’t matter what they’re saying about you, as long as they’re talking about you.
As time has gone on, the gambler has protected his stack, opting for retread or vanilla or unproven coaches and drafting talent that hasn’t delivered on the biggest stages since before Tiger Woods had won a single professional tournament.
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The hard numbers remain almost unbelievable in their futility: Dallas has won just five playoff games since their last Super Bowl victory in 1996, haven’t even reached a conference championship in that near 30-year span. (Put another way: Josh Allen wasn’t even born the last time the Cowboys won a Super Bowl.)
So with all that in mind — the cinematic gambling, the long-ago greatness, the desert of futility — it’s worth asking whether Jones really is a good owner or not. More to the point: Would you want him owning your team?
That depends on whether you value the Cowboys as a team or as an institution. By the first standard, Jones is coasting on past glories. By the second, he’s a world-class visionary. If you want to ride on the NFL’s largest bandwagon 365 days a year, Jones is your man. But if you want to celebrate wins after the New Year, well … maybe not.
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As a contrast, consider the case of Jones’ fellow billionaire Stan Kroenke, who like Jones swept in and bought a legacy franchise, and like Jones, enraged longtime fans. (Jones only fired a legend in Tom Landry; Kroenke moved the team out of town entirely.) Kroenke is virtually invisible, but he’s put football minds in decision-making roles, and as a result his Rams have four division championships, two Super Bowl appearances and one title since Kroenke bought the team in 2010.
Jones has insisted that he’s a winner for so long, and for so many years, that he’s cloaked himself in an aura of glory that no other franchise with his woeful on-field record can match. (Since 1996, the Jaguars, Panthers and Titans have all advanced farther in the playoffs than Dallas, whose winning percentage over the past 29 seasons is sandwiched between the Vikings and Saints.)
Perhaps the fact that Kroenke has built the Rams into the second-most-valuable franchise in the NFL will spur Jones. Perhaps Jones will point to the fact that there’s still $2.5 billion between his franchise and Kroenke’s.
And perhaps Jones is evidence of the fact that there’s a wide gap between “gamble” and “guarantee.” Every gambler’s big win is someone else’s big loss. Cold streaks always come around … and sometimes they can last for decades.