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Nothing says, “Happy Birthday” for an 82-year old billionaire NFL franchise owner quite like watching his team lose a home game by the largest point margin since purchasing the team 35 years ago.
The Detroit Lions handed the Dallas Cowboys a 47-9 beat down on national television Sunday afternoon. The TV cameras showed team owner Jerry Jones several times during the game, and he didn’t seem very happy watching this 38-point defeat.
The embarrassing home loss in Dallas also occurred on Jerry Jones’ 82nd birthday. Talk about bad timing!
Do you remember the first year after Jerry Jones took over the Dallas Cowboys in 1989?
I do. The Cowboys went 1-15 that season. Two business associates and I attended one of the Cowboys’ home games in Dallas that season.
They were a bad football team in 1989, but NFL rookie head coach Jimmy Johnson was in the process of trying to rebuild the team. You could sense the upside potential in the Cowboys even in defeat.
During that initial season after Jerry Jones purchased the team, the 1-15 Dallas Cowboys’ worst loss was 28-0 shutout at the New Orleans Saints in the 1989 season opener.
Those 1-15 Dallas Cowboys in 1989 played closer home games than this year’s 2024 version of the team (which is 0-3 at home).
Coming into 2024, the Dallas Cowboys have posted a record of 12-5 in each of the past three regular seasons. Despite their post-season slump, the “regular season” Dallas Cowboys were widely expected to be a top-tier NFC team again in 2024.
This year’s Dallas Cowboys have now lost all three home games and have been physically outplayed from the opening kickoff each time.
The New Orleans Saints scored on their first six possessions in destroying Dallas 44-19 (a 25-point final margin) in Week #2. Baltimore jumped to a big first half lead and then held on for a 28-25 win.
On Sunday, Detroit (which had lost six straight times to Dallas going back to 2015) took a 27-6 halftime lead. The Lions then added another 20 points for good measure in the second half to extract some pent-up revenge on the Cowboys during this 47-9 rout in Dallas.
“Let’s go to the phones for some of your comments!”
After Sunday’s game, I tuned in to listen to the post-game radio shows on the flagship radio station of the Dallas Cowboys. The media covering the game had a brief Q&A session with head coach Mike McCarthy, quarterback Dak Prescott, and, last but not least, team owner Jerry Jones.
I was surprised to hear from him. Why would Jerry Jones talk with the media after the game?
Jones bristled as one reporter asked if the owner was contemplating a coaching change after Sunday’s ugly loss to Detroit. In a nutshell, his answer was an emphatic “No!”
Two days after Jerry Jones’ birthday, it was time for the Jerry Jones radio show on Tuesday morning on Dallas sports radio station 105.3 FM The Fan.
Most NFL and major league franchise owners do not want to hold a weekly radio show. Though fans love to hear from their team owner, the callers and sports radio hosts are prone to ask a few difficult questions at times – especially after a 47-9 home loss to Detroit on Sunday.
On Tuesday morning, the two radio station hosts caught the team owner’s ire after posing a few relevant questions about the Cowboys’ ongoing problems – particularly in home games during 2024.
Jerry Jones angrily shot back at the two radio hosts for their line of questioning.
“This is not your job,” said the team owner. “Your job isn’t to let me go over all of the reasons that I did something and I’m sorry that I did it. That’s not your job. I’ll get somebody else to ask these questions. I’m not kidding. You’re not going to figure out what the team is doing right or wrong.”
When asked if the Cowboys failed to improve their roster during the offseason, owner Jerry Jones bristled once again.
“Don’t tell me about how we should’ve gotten a guy in the offseason,” Jones shot back.
“I’m dealing with how we line up against San Francisco, not what I did wrong last week, or last month, or two months ago, or two years ago.”
Notice Jerry Jones’ last sentence began with the phrase, “I’m dealing with…”
The best head coach in Dallas since Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989 has been Jimmy Johnson.
He and Jones played football together at the University of Arkansas. Johnson became a top college coach at Oklahoma State and won a national championship at the University of Miami prior to accepting an offer to take over the Cowboys in 1989.
In Jimmy Johnson’s 2022 book called, “Swagger” (which I highly recommend for Dallas Cowboys fans), he agreed to take the job in Dallas as long as Jerry Jones handled the business side and kept away from Jimmy Johnson’s football operations.
After succeeding in remaking the Dallas Cowboys line-up with rookie draft picks and free agents, Jimmy Johnson led Dallas to Super Bowl titles in 1992 and 1993.
Meddlin’ Jerry Jones surfaces
In his book, Jimmy Johnson described how team owner Jerry Jones had begun to pop-up more and more in the team locker room and with the assembled media from day to day. Johnson reminded Jerry Jones to stay in his own lane.
When owner Jerry Jones countered with his own reminder about who wrote the paychecks in Dallas, Jimmy Johnson resigned as the Cowboys head coach.
Coach Jimmy Johnson knew that owner Jerry Jones’ growing ego would begin to interfere with the coach’s relationship with the players. Since the popular Jimmy Johnson left the Cowboys in early 1994, Dallas has gone through seven coaches who have experienced similar issues with the team’s heavy-handed owner.
Barry Switzer (1994-1997), Chan Gailey (1998-1999, Dave Campo (2000-2002), Bill Parcells (2003-2006), Wade Phillips (2007-2010), and Jason Garrett (2011-2019) have preceded current head coach Mike McCarthy (2019-present).
Though Switzer led Dallas to one final Super Bowl victory in January, 1996 with a roster filled with mostly Jimmy Johnson’s players, the Cowboys have not returned to play in the NFC championship game since.
There remains one constant in Dallas
After those 28 ½ years since Dallas last played in the NFC title game or a Super Bowl, fans of the Cowboys remain stuck with one important person who simply won’t go away.
Team owner Jerry Jones is now 82 years old. Based on his radio show performance on Tuesday, he is starting to sound more like Clint Eastwood’s “Get off my lawn!” retired auto worker character in the movie Gran Torino.
No other NFL owner has tried harder to become the face of his franchise than Jerry Jones. Unfortunately for Dallas Cowboys fans, his constant meddling in team operations has failed to produce a championship team in nearly 29 years.
He has also shown no interest in selling the most valuable sports franchise in America.
Jerry Jones and his family have $10 billion reasons to stick around
Love him or hate him, Jerry Jones still remains firmly in control of the Dallas Cowboys franchise. After buying the team for $140 million in late 1988, the franchise is worth nearly $10 billion today.
If you think he is worried about fan backlash after the Cowboys’ streak of putrid home field performances, think again.
“I’m not worried about fan apathy,” gloated Jerry Jones this morning on his radio show. “If you saw the letters and things I’m getting, it’s the last thing from apathy. You’re seeing very, very keen, intense passion, about what we’re not doing. And concern for what we’re doing…I love the passion, and nobody’s more passionate than our Dallas Cowboys fans.”
Jerry Jones seems to be convinced that most Dallas Cowboys fans are as gullible as comic strip legend Charlie Brown running up to kick that football which Lucy always pulls away from him at the last second.
The trick works every time.
The real question is whether the Cowboys fans will wise up, rise up, and start a massive campaign to stop buying season tickets over the next few years. Perhaps a significant loss of revenue might convince ol’ Jer to finally retire and quit meddling with this team.
I suspect that the wily Dallas Cowboys franchise owner is more than willing to take that dare.
Don’t forget. Jerry Jones still owns the NFL football franchise in Big D!