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Tuesday, February 23, 1999

Cowboys’ Jones celebrates 10 years of ownership this week

By Mike Fisher

Knight Ridder Newspapers

IRVING, Texas -- To understand why Jerry Jones has operated the Dallas Cowboys in his unique manner, consider his last career change, into the murky world of the oil business.

Jones didn’t know a geologist from an engineer when he ventured away from sales and marketing. In his first investment meeting, an expert driller advised the naive Jones.

CSpend $3 million to drill right there and you’ll find oil and gas," a geologist told Jones.

"Well," Jones shot back, "if you’re so sure, why don’t you invest your money?’

Jones says that was the day he realized experts offer only opinions in most professions.

"So in that business," he said, "I had to learn engineering. I had to educate myself, be hands-on. And then came the business of the Dallas Cowboys. Everybody had opinions, but nobody knew. There was no handbook, no blueprint.

"So we wrote our own."

On Thursday, Jerral Wayne Jones celebrates the 10-year anniversary of his high-profile purchase of the Cowboys. He has become the author of a decade-long story that has entertained, energized and sometimes polarized a public fascinated by both the club’s soap-operatic adventures and its six NFC East titles, its four NFC Championship Game apperances and its three Super Bowl titles -- accomplishments that make Jones’ Cowboys the NFL’s Team of the ‘90s.

"I want to win more today than I did the first day," said Jones."But when we do have adversity, as much as I want it to look like I’m mad, truly, I have very little right to be -- because we’ve had so many great times, and because I’ve been so lucky here."

Beyond the on-field success, the once-floundering Cowboys -- Jones claims a pre-purchase study showed the franchise was destined to lose $25 million a year -- are now worth an estimated $400 million, making the club one of the most valuable properties in American sports.

"I did not buy the Dallas Cowboys to get my head amputated financially, as a toy to lose money on," said Jones, "I didn’t buy it to make money -- so I could someday sell at a profit -- but I always wanted to be able to look in the mirror as both a businessman and a sportsman."

In his 10 years as owner, Jones has been businessman and sportsman and geologist and engineer. When reflecting on his tenure last week, Jones recalled what he said on Feb. 25, 1989.

"This is going to be my life," he quoted himself as saying then. Jones also gave every indication that he would be a much different kind of Cowboys owner, aggressive, opinionated, involved and in the limelight.

"And everything has gone that way," Jones confirmed. "It hasn’t deviated one iota in 10 years."

In 10 years, Jones has gone from learning the business of NFL owner to making unprecedented business and marketing deals to one of the most powerful owners in the league who, at the request of commissioner Paul Tagliabue, sits on its competition committee and executive management council. He admits he made some mistakes along the way, but in effect he’s given the NFL a new form of owner’s manual. ‘FOOTBALL MAN’

What continues to happen, largely because of the fuel provided by this force of nature named Jerry Jones, is a wildly entertaining circus. Accusations of "meddling" have come frequently from Cowboys outsiders. Jones casually deflects this particular criticism.

"If I’m the owner of a grocery store and I’m in charge of paying the bills, how can the fact that I’m also in charge of arranging the shelves be ‘meddling’?" Jones asked.

Jones still attends film sessions with his coaches, still goes on scouting trips with his personnel people, still subtly reminds that he isn’t just an owner, but also a general manager.

"The critics still harp on whether I’m a ‘football man,’ " Jones said. "I’ve been doing this for 10 years. How long does it take to be a football man? Is it 12 years, or 13 years? How long does it take to know your way around the NFL?"

The likes of Tom Landry, Tex Schramm, Gil Brandt, Dick Nolan, Dick Mansperger, Bob Ackles, John Wooten and Jimmy Johnson have come and gone during the Jones era. It begs the question Jones considers most unfair:

Why doesn’t Jerry Jones hire a general manager?

"It is a little source of irritation to me that as we evaluate the 10 years, as we evaluate the good decisions we’ve made, the success we’ve had, to hear people say ‘Jerry needs help,’ " Jones said. "The thing that bothers me most is that some people don’t recognize all the good decisions we’ve made, and some people don’t understand where the ultimate decision maker was."

Jones is fond of admitting that he knew nothing about running an NFL team a decade ago. He’s more fond of terming that ignorance a positive of sorts.

"They say ignorance is bliss? It was for us," Jones said. "Maybe it was an advantage at times that we didn’t know our limitations, that we thought we didn’t have limitations because we didn’t know any better."

"We didn’t know any better" could be Jones’ perspective on much much of his early years as Cowboys honcho. Upon buying the franchise from H.R. "Bum" Bright, he claims he declined Bright’s offer to handle the firing of Landry and others. "Bum, a fine gentleman, asked if he should do the firing so I’d only be saddled with the hiring," Jones said. "I turned him down. But don’t think I did that alone. I had the advice of some of the finest PR minds in the country, people who’d advised presidents. Of course, presidents sometimes get in trouble, too, don’t they?"

After that first season in 1989, Jones hired the public-relations firm Fairchild-LeMaster to guide him. And since then, the comments regarding how he’d be in charge of everything from "socks and jocks" to how the cheerleaders were the "pick of the litter" to how Troy Aikman "looked good in the shower" have subsided.

"People twist -1/4Rmy comments-1/4S around a little bit," Jones said. "The way I was attacked when I first bought the team hurt. It hurt a lot. I don’t think anything the media did to me was vindictive. But I do think the media took advantage of a part of my personality."

Jones has been called cheap and heartless and ruthless, and he has more than his share of enemies. You don’t invade Texas from Arkansas to buy the Cowboys, hire outsider Jimmy Johnson and fire Tom Landry, all essentially in one clumsy swipe of the machete, and not make enemies.

"Jerry’s style can be brash, to say the least," said Cleveland Browns president Carmen Policy, Jones’ archrival when Policy was in charge of the San Francisco 49ers. "Ours was always, necessarily, an adversarial relationship. But what a wonderful adversary he was."

THREE REGRETS

Regrets?

Jerry Jones has a few.

Ask the Cowboys owner to rank his top three mistakes of his first 10 years on the job, and off he goes, launching into a lengthy stream-of-consciousness oration that seems painfully frank but cathartic.

"Certainly," Jones said, "there was a time when the other people in this league saw us and thought, ‘Boy are we gonna take these guys to the cleaners.’ And in some cases, I screwed up, big time."

Jones ranks his top three errors:

1. The importance of players’ off-the-field behavior: "I wish I would have jumped out of bed on that first morning in 1989 and realized how much the behavior issue mattered," Jones said. "I never even considered it. The issue snuck up on me. I just figured, if we’re winning, succeeding, firin’ hard, doin’ anything to win, there wouldn’t be criticism.

"I was wrong. I now get it."

2. Keeping Barry Switzer beyond the 1995 season: "Hindsight says it would have been best for Barry to leave after we won the Super Bowl," conceded Jones. "We won it with Barry, and for Barry. And he’s one of finest men, as an individual and a friend, I’ve ever known. But when he was successful, I should have encouraged him to be part of a change right there."

As for the charge that Switzer’s Cowboys were destined to win a Super Bowl with or without him, Jones responded angrily.

"Barry never got the credit he deserved," Jones said. "Let me ask you about the Green Bay Packers. All that talent, a great quarterback, a fine coach and general manager (Mike Holmgren and Ron Wolf). Why isn’t it automatic for them to always win a Super Bowl? And now, Ron has Ray (Rhodes) taking over for Holmgren. Believe me, if Ron and Ray can get them a championship, it’ll be a great achievement -- the same kind of thing Barry achieved."

3. His three-headlines-in-one takeover of the franchise: "Doing those three major things in one swoop," Jones said, continues to haunt him.

"The change in ownership. The management and coaching change. And the hiring of Jimmy Johnson. Each of those was a huge sports story by itself. But we lumped them together, giving the wrong appearance. ... It was a mistake. There was that one big press conference, which I didn’t handle very well. And what happened, happened."

But Jones is all about pushing the envelope. In February 1993, when the new rules of the collective bargaining agreement featuring free agency and the salary cap were fresh and full of loopholes, Jones was not displeased.

"We seem to thrive around here when there is a little ‘vagueness’ or a little ‘give’ in the rules," he said.

Jones thinks with his tongue and he makes commitments he cannot possibly keep and he flies by the seat of his pants -- "Blowin’ and goin’," he calls it -- in an oddly absent-minded way.

"That mind is a busy mind," said sports agent Leigh Steinberg. "From the start, while some in the NFL were still riding in covered wagons, Jerry was steering a race car. It’s a sort of outside-the-box thinking that gave the Cowboys the opportunity to get ahead, and gives them the opportunity to stay ahead."

SECOND-AND-10

In a sense, Jones’ career has come full circle. He started in what he calls "the world of marketing." And marketing is still how he spends much of his time as he looks to the future of the franchise.

For instance, Jones plans on re-furbishing Texas Stadium by adding seats and possibly a roof for what he calls "a state-of-the-art stadium" that could bring a Super Bowl to North Texas. One of his greatest battles with the NFL establishment, the duel with NFL Properties, is also another apparent victory for Jones. He predicts that by 2003 the Cowboys will own all the licensing rights and revenues of their marks and logos.

"Some of the things I was doing early on that drew criticism," Jones said, "are now the norm."

Then there is the future of the football team.

"We’ve got the audacity to think we can win another Super Bowl, and another, in the next few years," said Jones. "We’ll win, and we’ll win the right way."

(c) 1999, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.