Cowboys owner, six others set to enter Hall
Jones turns losing proposition into financial empire
Jerry Jones is among seven men being enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, and there’s little doubt he belongs.
Jerry Jones is one of seven men being enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday night, and there is little doubt it’s a fitting honor. Since buying the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, Jones has become one of the most visible owners in sports history.
He is the only NFL owner who also serves as general manager, which means he’s involved in everything from daily player personnel decisions to marketing and sponsorship initiatives to the financial and design details that went into building AT&T Stadium.
Under Jones’ leadership, the Cowboys have become the richest sports franchise in the world, valued at $4.2 billon by Forbes magazine. He has been profiled on “60 Minutes,” interviewed by Jay Leno and Charlie Rose, featured in commercials — even rapping on one promoting pizzas — and made celebrity appearances on TV shows, most notably HBO’s “Entourage.”
The son of a grocery store
owner, Jones grew up in North Little Rock, Ark. He played football in high school, then played for legendary coach Frank Broyles at the University of Arkansas. Jones, 74, has been married to his wife, Gene, for 54 years.
In the days leading up to his enshrinement, Jones reflected on his career and the honor:
Q: When did it really hit you that you were going to be in the Hall of Fame?
A: The morning after the Super Bowl, (Hall of Fame executive director) David Baker has all of the people who have been selected come in and they can bring their family and have breakfast. They had Tim Brown and a couple of people who had been through this get up and tell their story in their own way. That’s “soaking in” time right there. But the No. 1 thing that everybody said was enjoy every detail of every moment. Enjoy it, savor it, and I’m doing that.
Q: It would seem that such an honor would lead to a lot of memories and reflection. What were your thoughts?
A: Frankly, it has caused me to reflect back not only from a team standpoint but the league. … It’s really caused me to look back at where we’ve come more than I ever have. I have an appreciation for the past, I do, but I don’t live in it. This has caused me to reflect.
Q: What would it mean to your father and mother if they were here to see this?
A: Mother died when she was 90, and she really got to experience a lot of the Cowboys. … Momma was the one who put the bow tie on me when I was 9 years old at the store to greet the customers. She did the bookkeeping and all of those kind of things, so she was really savvy.
She got a big kick out of the way we have marketed, the way we have approached the Cowboys and understood it, because as I’ve said many times, I stood on her and my dad’s shoulders. She got to really be involved, made all the Super Bowls, did all of those kind of things. Dad a little less so. He passed earlier.
Q: What did you learn from putting on a bow tie?
A: Learned to be positive. The customer was first. … My jobs as I grew older were to make and sell the ice cream or I would take the watermelons and stack them up. I’d personally sell the watermelons and I would be on a commission. The more we sold there the more I would make. So therein lies how I got entrepreneurial. That right there. I had some great coaching from family. That’s the way you live.
Q: Have you always looked at things differently?
A: I don’t accept the status quo. For instance, they passed a blue law and that meant you couldn’t stay open on Sunday. The only way you could stay open on Sunday is if you were a Seventh-Day Adventist and you closed on Saturday. Well, Dad went to the Adventist church and he closed on Saturday and opened on Sunday. Became very controversial, but it was a way to make it work. Well, you grew up figuring ways to be different and get to where you want to go.
Q: Did your Dad become a Seventh-Day Adventist? A: Yes, until they did away with the blue law.
Q: How did that influence you later?
A: When I got to school (at Arkansas), I sold shoes to the students, I sold insurance to the townspeople and I sold tickets. I would go over and get the tickets for a buck from the freshman girls that weren’t going to the games. Tickets were $7. You could sell any ticket in the stands for $20 because we had great teams.
The girls would use their IDs, I’d get about 20 tickets and I would go and I’d sell those tickets. But I said (to buyers), “I’m going to have to get you in when you get to the game,” whether it be Little Rock War Memorial Stadium or Fayetteville. And so they’d come to the player’s gate, I’d put my street clothes on, go out there, walk them across the end zone and put them in the stands because they didn’t have a student ID to get in the stands.
And so I was sitting there with 20 tickets and I was getting $20 a ticket. At a time when the nicest place you could live in was $65 a month, I was making $400 a ballgame. Coach Broyles used to ask right before if it was time he’d say, “Is Jones in yet?” Everybody knew what I was doing.
Q: In 1966 when you were 23 years old, you tried to buy the San Diego Chargers. How did you manage that?
A: I didn’t have money, but I had procured financing to build 10 Shakey’s Pizza parlors. And those people were willing to loan me the money to pursue the Chargers and buy them. It didn’t work. They didn’t have TV money and the teams were not making any money. So if you borrowed money, you would be in the hole.
“(His dad advised him) if you take a hit, make bad decisions, you’ll have to dig away from that the rest of your life. A good clean slate is very valuable. I think you are risking that here.” So I didn’t.
Q: You have said you were influenced by your father-in-law. But at first, there were problems. What happened?
A: He was very rough on me when I married Gene. He wouldn’t even look at me when she showed him the engagement ring and I had to ask him for her hand. He just looked at her and said I hope you are happy and turned and walked off. He didn’t even look at me.
Well, he turned out to be the greatest man other than my Dad in my life. He was such an inspiration. For instance, without me knowing it one time, he signed my note with the bank. When I paid the loan for $50,000, they made the mistake of sending it back to me rather than to him. He personally guaranteed it. The most he had ever borrowed was $15,000, but he signed my note for $50,000 and didn’t tell me about it. I really loved him. He died right before I bought the team, I mean like a month before I bought the team.
Q: When you bought the team, you took it in a new direction. You replaced Tom Landry as coach, and Tex Schramm, the general manager, left soon after that. What did you want to do differently?
A: I thought Tex had been a pioneer, a ground breaker in the promotion of a team. He really was masterful at using journalism and, at that time, the media. He would have many media join us for the trips on the team plane when others were reluctant to do that. I did respect him and I really respected Coach Landry. I’m one those guys if a coach says run through the wall, you don’t stop until you get through it. So I really respected a coach. I always thought it was ironic that I got criticized for not respecting coaching.
The thing Tex had done was create real, real unique visibility, and he’d done it right, as television created the forum to have a audience well beyond your immediate franchise area. That’s the Cowboys.
But marketing is using the visibility, creating viability with that visibility and using that visibility along with ingenuity. Just visibility alone leaves nothing to basically grow and expand or basically be what you need to be. You need financial viability to be the best you could be.
That was the reason the Cowboys were broke when I bought them. And they were broke. That was the reason there was a potential different business model for the NFL — and, frankly, for sports. We all were aware of the commonly known ticket revenue. And we were certainly aware, to some degree, of the television revenue. But taking that and expanding on it to maximize the potential, whether it be television or sponsorship opportunities, wasn’t there.
I would like to tell you I saw it wasn’t there, picked the Cowboys out because they had all that visibility. But that didn’t start popping in my mind until I got in the saddle with something that was losing almost $100,000 a day (in interest on the loan to buy the team).
If you count the cost of the capital, as well as the operating loss, it was (also) losing $1 million a month operationally. So you really had to get on your horse. Tex … made it possible to step up and do this marketing.
Q: How many people said you’re crazy for buying the team?
A: Every one of them. There’s a lot of people that had looked at the Dallas Cowboys and said it was a piece of you know what financially. And it was. On top of that, when I got involved, the publicity of me being involved created a serious onslaught. I had two or three lawsuits that were involved right at the time I got involved that didn’t have merit. I had a good friend running against (Gov.) Bill Clinton of Arkansas, and Bill Clinton had the public service commission look at my business.
All told, I was hit with a couple of billion dollars in lawsuits at the same time. I was getting really hit from all sides, frankly, because of the initial publicity of having bought the Cowboys. So, boy, I’m telling you, I was really having battles in those first 18 months to two years.
Q: When people asked you what are you doing, what would you say?
A: I would say, “I’m here because I want to be involved in football. I want to be involved in the team.” It was so much criticism — and, at the same time, I was being criticized for changing out Coach Landry — but there was so much criticism that you would develop a shield. I would just put one foot in front of the other, and I just kept pushing. I didn’t know if you could make a sports franchise work financially. Nobody had shown me one that was really working. Not that I’ve looked at many of them. I wouldn’t have respect at all from business schools if they’d looked at what I bought with the Cowboys. Because it didn’t work.
Q: So you bought the Cowboys because it was more about owning an NFL team than making a lot of money?
A: I don’t know that the business model ever was there that allowed you to have success and be good financially compared to anything else you could put your money into. I think you just tried to get it to become as little of a loss leader as you could. And I actually thought that if I could ever get it to the point that I was just losing X-million dollars a year, then I’m going to go out here and I will get in something else and hopefully I could use the Cowboys and the affinity of the Cowboys.
I’d never gone and studied Anheuser-Busch/ St. Louis Cardinals, but I figured (the alliance with the Cardinals) helped sell beer. Maybe I could take that affinity and go and create some more viability and justify owning the team. I was all in. I had some money but gave it all up to get the team. Stephen (Jones, his son) said it the best. I’ve had him tell me, “I believe you’d have made a nickel with the Cowboys than you had a dollar anyplace else.”
Q: In recent years, you have built AT&T Stadium and The Star, your state-of-the-art training facility. Some have even called you the de facto commissioner. How does it feel to be going into the Hall at the height of your influence?
A: There’s a little more of Hall of Fame that represents years ago. I think that’s the best way for me to say it. The Hall of Fame is an “old show.” It’s a result of that period of time. The Hall of Fame looks at a long 27-28 years. It’s coincidental, possibly, that the timing is about the same time that we’re where we are with the league. Basically, I wouldn’t be a proponent of anything that I’m not practicing. It would be hard for me to get on the podium and say somebody needs to build a Star if you hadn’t done it yourself. So I guess that’s the way I look at that. I feel very strongly what I do with the league is for the Cowboys and I feel strongly that this is going to be better for every team in the league.