OXNARD, Calif. — Jerry Jones has done this countless times. Sat for innumerous interviews with scores of reporters. Shared goodness knows how many tales.
He’s had a weekly radio show for decades. Held court after at least 500 Cowboys games. On Tuesday 300 million Netflix subscribers were able to parts of 40 hours of Jones interviews woven through an eight-part docuseries.
Yet on this afternoon during Cowboys training camp, Jones within a four-minute span of a 45-minute interview with The Dallas Morning News divulges a 15-year secret and another that dates to the morning of Feb. 26, 1989.
The first would go viral, Jones revealing his decade-long Stage 4 melanoma battle and successful trial-drug treatment.
The other? Jones, seated at a table in his hotel-room-turned-office in the Cowboys’ Oxnard, Calif., training complex, locks his blue-eyed gaze onto the reporter’s pupils.
“Now, here’s something I’ve never told anyone.”
He described the morning aftermath of what the Netflix series dubs the “Saturday night massacre,” when reporters skewered him throughout the press conference announcing his $140 million purchase of the Cowboys from Bum Bright.
“When I woke up my first thought was, ‘My God, what have I done?'”
Minutes later Bright phoned Jones’ room at the Mansion on Turtle Creek.
“He said, ‘Jerry, I have someone who says that whatever agreement you and I have, if I take your name off and put their name on it, they’ll give you $10 million to go back to Little Rock.'”
Seriously?
“Seriously,” Jones said. “I said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ So, really, I had two major moments when I had to be sure I wanted to take this on, going to work in the business of sport.”
Let that sink in, perhaps as you settle in to stream “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys.”
An alternate reality was on the table, one that would have profoundly altered the course of North Texas and American sports history.
Perhaps the Cowboys wouldn’t be entering their 30th consecutive season without an NFC title game appearance.
Also, though, Jimmy Johnson wouldn’t have abruptly succeeded Tom Landry in 1989. In which case there probably wouldn’t have been a 1990s dynasty.
Without the Jones effect, it’s doubtful the Cowboys would have so dramatically risen from the ashes of losing $1 million per month to pro sports financial supremacy. There surely would have been little basis for a Netflix series.
By exhuming that 1989 tale, Jones illustrated two points. One is unspoken; the other he wants to emphasize, partly because he believes Netflix’s combined seven-hour, 38-minute version of history falls short of doing so.
“I never got involved with the Cowboys for an investment, or to say I bought something,” he said. “I came in for a change in career. I looked at it as though I had a new job.”
He said he realized how preposterous that sounds, coming days after Sportico valued the Cowboys at $12.8 billion, easily the highest of any sports franchise in the world and an astronomical 9,043% increase from Jones’ 1989 purchase price.
Turning down that $10 million offer to disappear into the Ozarks proved wise, indeed.
The other thing Jones illustrated, throughout the Netflix series and in both revelations to The News, is that his flair for intrigue, at age 82, hasn’t waned.
“America’s Team” co-directors Maclain and Chapman Way said that when they began the project two years ago, they were nervous that Jones and other central characters wouldn’t be forthcoming.
“Upon meeting Jerry, man, he understands story,” Chapman Way said. “He understands drama and conflict. For us it was a dream to work with a main subject who understands that.
“We maybe came in a little bit more safe and timid — and Jerry kind of blew the doors open upon meeting him. It opened everything up for us to tell the story.”
Reality television
This is Jones’ 37th Cowboys training camp. Eighteen have occurred in Texas – Austin, Wichita Falls, San Antonio, Frisco – but the others have been here in Southern California’s Ventura County.
Jones said he begins every camp with the same message to players.
“I could be anywhere in the world and do mostly anything I want, but being out here is exactly what I love to do.”
Throughout the interview with The News, Jones scribbled on a notepad, occasionally thumping his pencil on the pad while stating points of emphasis.
“I’m an addict on the combinations of things that football is about,” he said.
The previous night, 60 miles to the east, Jones appeared to be equally in his element at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre, soaking in the glitz and anticipation of the world premiere of “America’s Team.”
Hollywood Walk of Fame names on the sidewalk in front of the theater include Mel Brooks, Cate Blanchett, Dennis Hopper and Dolly Parton.
Jones 45 minutes before the premier, surrounded by his wife of 61 years, Gene; their grown children Stephen, Charlotte and Jerry Jr.; and grandchildren.
It’s quite a night for three Jones generations, especially patriarch Jerry. Of course being The Gambler means he’s the docuseries’ title character.
As Jones gradually made his way down the Cowboys-blue carpet, pausing at an assembly line of interview stations, multiple announcements were made for everyone to take their seats in the theater.
No one was worried, though. The show would not start without Jones, who wore a dark suit, blue tie and silver star pin on his left lapel. He was literally the last person off the carpet, sharing final words to a group of Cowboys beat writers.
“It’s real special because I’ve looked at the finished product and looked at some of how we got here. It wasn’t as pretty and wasn’t as fun as I remember. There’s some down times here. But I was so proud to get to be a part of the Cowboys.
“And I was so gunned up because I really risked more [financially] than anybody should have to.”
Audience seated, Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bjaria described her excitement upon learning in March 2023 that the streaming service was securing rights to the Cowboys story, adding “it had long been a white whale project for us.”
Spoiler alert for Cowboys fans who aren’t old enough to remember the 1990s: “America’s Team” is a football-themed blend of “The Last Dance,” “Tiger King” and “Stranger Things.”
Or as Jones in Episode 1 described his thought process upon buying the Cowboys: “It could be a soap opera 365 days a year. I could get the eyeballs and platform and I can juice it up a little bit.”
The Egyptian Theatre crowd applauded and cheered numerous times during the show, which was an edited-down combination of episodes 1, 2 and 3.
Afterward, legendary play-by-play broadcaster Al Michaels moderated a question and answer session with Jones, 1990s Cowboys legends Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin and Chapman and Maclain Way.
“The National Football League,” summed Michaels, “is the greatest unscripted thing on reality television, without any question.”
The audience collectively laughed when Jones quiped that the Cowboys’ collosal following is comprised of “the ones that want to see us get our ass kicked and the ones that want to see us win.”
Jones turned toward Irvin, seated next to him.
“Maybe we’ll get out of here tonight, Michael, and give them something else to be interested about.”
Laughed Irvin: “I just don’t want it to end up on TMZ.”
Crossing bright lines
The afternoon after the premiere, back in Oxnard and no longer on stage, Jones was more reflective.
He said doing those 40-plus hours of Netflix interviews over the course of two years “brought things forward” in his mind that he’d long ago pushed to the back.
Episode 1 – “Saturday Night Massacre” – features scenes from the press conference, including when 46-year-old Jones infamously said: “I intend to have an understanding of the cleats situation; I intend to have an understanding of the player situation; and I intend to have an understanding of jocks and socks.”
Today, Jones said that what reporters and fans didn’t and still don’t understand is the Jones family’s approach to work, a legacy built by his parents, J.W. “Pat” and Arminta Jones.
Pat and Arminta worked side-by-side for decades, initially in Los Angeles hot houses, growing poinsettias that many Americans gifted to soldiers returning from World War II.
Even after moving to Little Rock, Ark., and starting grocery, insurance and tourism businesses, Pat and Arminta did most of the labor and enlisted family members, including 9-year-old Jerry greeting customers at Pat’s Supermarket.
“There’s two approaches to having a business,” he said. “One is you let the money do the work. The other is when you do the work. I’ve never known any other way to own something other than doing the work.
“And that probably causes some confusion today, because the way the [NFL] perception was it’s that owners own, general managers manage, coaches coach.
“I’ve been crossing those bright lines since almost the day I got on Earth. I’m not a bright line guy. I’m a remove-the-lines-and-let-people-work guy.”
Besides, that $140 million he paid for the Cowboys, which didn’t include taking on the franchise’s considerable debt?
“I had barely covered a third of the toll,” he said. “I had to go get the rest. And I didn’t know where I was going to get it when I shook hands and agreed to pay it.”
Hence, The Gambler. And why Jones made the jocks and socks comment. He needed to learn the minutiae in order to see the bigger picture.
No one attending that press conference on the night of Feb. 25, 1989, had a clue that when Jones eventually saw the bigger picture, it would transform the economics of pro sports and help catapult him into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“Well, I didn’t know, either,” he said. “I really didn’t know what was ahead, and therein lies the risk.”
It was far from the first time he’d taken risk, “gotten out over my skis,” as he put it. In his early 30s he’d traveled through Dallas and at a rental car counter suffering humiliation when the agent cut his credit card in half and lectured, “‘Young man, you need to learn how to pay your bills.”
This time Jones not only was risking his and Gene’s financial future, but those of his three early-20s children, whom he was asking to make the Cowboys their vocation.
“It was the devil that made me do it,” he said, “the devil being the Dallas Cowboys.”
Warts and all
From 1-15 the first year of Jones’ ownership and Johnson’s coaching, the Cowboys rose to 7-9, then 11-5, led by The Triplets: quarterback Troy Aikman, running back Smith and wide receiver Irvin.
Every Cowboys fan older than, say, 40, knows what happened next. Super Bowl-winning seasons in 1992 and 1993. The shocking and seemingly inexplicable Jones-Johnson breakup. Barry Switzer coaching Dallas to the 1995 season Super Bowl title.
The implosion that followed, chronicled by Netflix in Episode 7: “Cocaine Cowboy.”
Even for those who lived or closely followed that era, “America’s Team” is a fascinating and at times illuminating watch. Some of Netflix’s roughly 40 interview subjects do not shy from assessing Jones’ share of blame, perhaps most pointedly Aikman.
“I felt like Jerry was learning the business on my time, for lack of a better way of saying it.”
Jones admits some parts of watching the series were painful to relive, but he said throughout the interview process he encouraged the directors to peer under every rock and show every aspect, warts and all.
“I knew the more they could get into it, the more they understood, the more interesting it would be,” he said.
Jones, as the co-director Way brothers noted, understands what makes a compelling story. As in any great movie or book, “America’s Team” has nearly all the optimal elements: dynamic characters; juicy subplots; conflict; resolution; pronounced peaks and valleys.
But ideally the audience wants a happy ending, right? Triumph. Redemption. Something uplifting. But positive endings are hard to find when a franchise during its last 29 seasons is 5-13 in playoff games.
“Obviously it’s been a tough last 30 years,” Way said. “They haven’t had the success they want. Where does the blame land? Who’s responsible for that?
“We definitely get into that in Episode 8. And nothing was off limits with Jerry. No questions we couldn’t ask. No topics we couldn’t talk about.”
To no surprise, Netflix chose the Jones-Johnson reconciliation as “Jerry’s World” Episode 8’s closest thing to a happy ending, its cameras and microphones capturing a poignant hug and exchange during Johnson’s Ring of Honor induction ceremony.
“I love you,” Johnson said into Jones’ ear.
“I love you, too,” Jones replied.
Obviously Netflix hoped the Cowboys would produce positive on-the-field closure, too, chronicling the 12-win seasons of 2021, 2022 and 2023 and a 16-game home winning streak.
Cameras and microphones were positioned in Jones’ AT&T Stadium suite for the Jan. 14, 2024, wild-card playoff against Green Bay. But when the Cowboys fell behind 27-0, Jones glumly muttered “Boy, what a disaster,” the 48-32 defeat all but sealed.
Gene Jones noted to Netflix that none of their grandkids have attended a Super Bowl. Charlotte Jones added: “We say ‘We’ll get ’em next time,’ but we’re running out of ‘We’ll get ’em next times.'”
A full life
Surprisingly “America’s Team” makes only passing mention of Jones’ cancer battle, with Jones merely saying he’d been treated at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer “a dozen years ago,” without specifics.
Now, we know he was diagnosed in 2010 with the most dire stage of melanoma and that he’s had at least six operations: two lung and two lymph node surgeries and a pair of hip replacements.
Surely fighting for his life has influenced his perspective during these past 15 years, including during the production of “America’s Team,” which in essence is a legacy project. It isn’t called “The Gambler and His Cowboys: for nothing.
“It was a little surprising that I had to tailor my thoughts because this thing was basically going to pretty much stop in the mid-1990s,” Jones said.
“Well, I don’t look at it that way. I treasure what happened between 1989 and 1995 and what caused me to get there. But that hasn’t been my life. My life has been full. Exciting. Promising. I think we’ve been close to winning a Super Bowl.”
He cited Tony Romo’s fumbled snap of the potential winning kick in the 2006 playoff loss at Seattle; the 2007 team going 13-3 but bowing out at home against the eventual Super Bowl champion Giants; the “Dez caught it” playoff loss at Green Bay in 2015.
“You add another one or two [Super Bowl appearances] to this thing, and you’re talking about a different story over this period of time.
“But hello, NFL. Hello, for me, the challenge. I accept a black eye. I do. I accept it. But as far as the approaches in what we’re doing, I do make adjustments. It’s not like I walk up there and say, ‘Well, what you’ve been doing the last three or four years didn’t get it done.’ You should change, so I do change.
“So to roll back around and make a point, you couldn’t in any way throw enough ‘it’s been this many years since you’ve been to that’ at me and make me not be elated at the life I’ve been part of with the Dallas Cowboys.”
In other words, who needs a happy ending when the 36-year journey – though often stressful and too frequently disappointing – has been so fulfilling, operating the Cowboys as a family business, his children and now some of his grandchildren by his side?
Beating cancer along the way, no less?
“Everything I could have ever dreamed of when I made this kind of commitment, when I got this job, it’s been so much more than I could have ever imagined.”
Besides, just because Netflix’s cameras are gone and the docuseries is a wrap doesn’t mean the soap opera is over.
Jones still is living his epilogue. A new Cowboys season, with new head coach Brian Schottenheimer, looms. The protracted Micah Parsons contract negotiations dominate daily headlines.
“If we can keep Dak [Prescott] standing and do the things that help keep him standing, which is better protection and better run-blocking – right there, those two – we’re going to have a good team,” he said. “That’s a big challenge, but that’s why we drafted what we drafted.”
Now, back to that Feb. 26, 1989, morning. For decades there have been reported mentions of a late mystery buyer, but never that Jones was offered $10 million to walk away.
Jones said the person was a fellow oil and gas tycoon.
“They’re well-known,” he said. “They were very acceptably qualified.”
Who was it? The Gambler smiles, leaving a cliffhanger for the next JerryFlix series.
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