Jerry Jones is the Dallas Cowboys and the Dallas Cowboys are Jerry Jones. They are synonymous with one another and can’t be separated. It’s crazy to think one ever existed without the other at this point. The wild part is that if you went back to February 27, 1989 and told that future to anyone in the country, especially at his Saturday Night Massacre Press Conference, they’d think a dumber prediction wouldn’t be possible. Here’s the story of how Jerry Jones came to be the Cowboys.
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The Dallas Cowboys were formed in 1960 as an expansion team and hired Giants defensive coordinator Tom Landry to be their first head coach. How long ago was this contextually? Tom Landry INVENTED the 4-3 defense! Over the next 29 years, Landry would iconically patrol the Dallas sidelines in his grey suit and fedora to two championships and as the steward of America’s Team. Landry was everything to professional football in Texas.
Original owner Clint Murchison sold the team to oil tycoon “Bum” Bright in 1984 and the wheels fell off. After 20 straight seasons finishing over .500, the 1986 and ’87 Cowboys each won 7 games. That dropped to just 3 wins in 1988. There were outside factors to this too, but many believed the now 65-year-old Landry was to blame and the game had passed him by.
Bright wasn’t helping things either. He spent hundreds of millions in the unregulated savings and loan business which famously went belly up. As his financial losses mounted, the Cowboys were the furthest thing from his mind with one exception, he HATED Tom Landry. The hatred was so much that when he was looking for a buyer for the team, his only condition was that Landry had to be fired (WTF!). He needed a guy who didn’t give any shits about that kind of thing.
Jerry Jones was a wild and lucky hustler from Arkansas who didn’t care about anything but what he wanted. His first goal was to be rich. After getting a finger into every little business he could from pizza to insurance while in college, Jerry was well on his way before even stepping into the legitimate business world. Once he was out, he started wildcatting for new oil patches and nailed his first 13 drillings! A few business deals later and he was one of the richest people in the country.
With that first goal out of the way, what was next? He wanted to own a football team. He first attempted to buy into the San Diego Chargers, but his father advised him to wait. The real dream was to own the Dallas Cowboys. Well not only did they happen to be for sale in 1989 and he had the $150m asking price lying around, but he also had no qualms about firing Tom Landry. After all, his intention was to install his old Oklahoma friend and roommate Jimmy Johnson. SOLD!
Before the deal was final, Jones and Johnson were caught in a Dallas taco restaurant together and the rumor mill blew up. People were pissed. After all, Tom Landry WAS the Dallas Cowboys. He had been there for their entire history as the stoic and classy icon of the team. Now, though he still technically had his job, Landry was about to be replaced by a 46-year-old nouveau rich playboy and his brash and cocky cohort who just happened to be the head coach of the most loathed team in college football history, the Miami Hurricanes.1 You couldn’t be any more NOT Tom Landry than Jimmy Johnson, right down to the hat vs hair debate.
Bright offered to fire Tom Landry himself upon completion of the sale, but Jones insisted on the job. I’m not saying he was an a-hole or anything, he just figured it was his duty as the new boss. The problem was that he couldn’t find him. Landry wasn’t at his home or the office. Instead, reading the writing on the wall, Landry flew himself out to Lakeview, TX (some 5+ hours by car from Valley Ranch, the Cowboys headquarters) to play golf at the appropriately named course Hidden Hills. So, Jerry went to the golf course and met Landry on the putting green. The deed was done. Landry wept.
How did Jerry react to this in his press conference? “This is like Christmas for me!” That’s a direct quote. He didn’t seem to understand that the Cowboys and Landry meant something to the people in Dallas and that if Landry could go, then all of the staffers in the room could and would probably be next. It was the end of an era. While Jerry was giddy, everyone else was a mix of sadness and anxiety. The pressed dubbed his 7 minute out of touch monologue the Saturday Night Massacre and called Jerry, with his Arkansan drawl, Jethro (after a character on the Beverly Hillbillies).
Of course, things got better. After a 1-15 first season, the Cowboys were back-to-back Super Bowl champions within 5 years. Jerry was rich, owner of the Cowboys, and champion. With all his goals accomplished, what he wanted now was notoriety and credit. As long as Jimmy Johnson was there, that wasn’t going to happen. Jimmy had to go and the split was a mess. The two didn’t talk for decades. Barry Switzer came in and won the Cowboys another title with Jimmy’s boys, but that was it.
30 years on now, the Cowboys are still mired in their longest Super Bowl slump. Hell, they haven’t even made the Conference Title Game in the time. That seems ok with Jerry though. Sure, he would like to win, but he has accomplished everything he ever wanted. When you think of the Cowboys, you don’t think of the Super Bowls or Tom Landry or Jimmy Johnson…you think of Jerry Jones, for better and for worse.
- Not by me though. As a young fan of professional wrestling heals, I LOVED those Hurricane teams. ↩︎
Source: Boys Will Be Boys by Jeff Pearlman
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