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The Lone Star: Jerry Jones

Continued success with Cowboys turns NFL outlier into sports business influencer

The eight-seat helicopter with the familiar blue star on its tail completed its third lap around the perimeter of the Dallas Cowboys’ gleaming, glass-walled headquarters, then banked right, tracking north above a stretch of recent development aptly dubbed the $5 Billion Mile.

From a gray leather seat behind the co-pilot, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones pointed to a soon-to-be harvested intersection just east of a tollway exit.

“We own all four corners,” Jones said into the microphone on his noise-reducing headphones, his gravelly voice conveying pride. “We’re developing all four corners, commercially. This spot alone will be in excess of a $2 billion investment.

“I thought when we bought this land 15 or 20 years ago that I’d never see anything but cattle on it.”

Jones, 74, flashed a toothy smile, his blue eyes glimmering. He waited a beat and then swiveled forward, scanning the path ahead for another of his upcoming real estate projects, an 1,800-home residential development to be called Star Trail.

Jones’ real estate company accumulated enough property to the north of the metroplex over the last 25 years to emerge as the booming area’s largest land holder, he said, betting big on emerging communities such as Frisco, home of the team’s recently relocated headquarters.

“Grandchildren stuff,” is what Jones thought they were buying, land that would remain undeveloped for at least another generation. He planned to use it to keep horses and cattle and hunt doves.

It has grown up far more quickly than he anticipated.

Former MLB and NHL owner Tom Hicks opened a Triple-A ballpark and moved his Dallas Stars training complex to Frisco in 2003. The Hunt family followed two years later with an MLS stadium as anchor to a massive soccer complex. But commercial growth didn’t come until more recently, spurred by several corporate relocations and a spate of high-end housing developments.

Even with all that, Jones was a vocal, and seemingly entrenched, naysayer when his three adult children approached him about moving the Cowboys offices and training facility there early in 2013.

An unlikely series of events had created the opportunity for the team to occupy 91 prime acres off the Dallas North Tollway, in a package that included a $25 million relocation incentive, along with $90 million toward an indoor stadium that would be shared with the schools.

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JERRY JONES
Still, when the next generation of Cowboys ownership approached him about the then $1.5 billion mixed-use project on what he termed “A+” land, Jones acted as if they’d asked for the money to drill for oil across the street from Central Park.

He’d operated with shaky hands through his early years as owner of America’s team, taking it from a money pit that was losing $1 million a month to a bona-fide gusher, then tempted fate again when he embarked upon an unprecedented $1.2 billion stadium project that plowed into the greatest recession of his lifetime. Having finally settled his stomach, Jones wasn’t at all interested in what he referred to, again and again, as a third “dance with the devil.”

“Churches build cathedrals to give substance to the belief in what they’re preaching,” he told his son, Jerry Jr., more than once when he tried to sell him on the project. “We don’t need a fancy office for people to believe in the Cowboys. We’ve got believers.”

It wasn’t until he absorbed the full breadth of the project that Jones found religion. They not only would put their own offices there, but lease out upward of 300,000 square feet of space to others at a premium of about 30 percent over market. They would be a partner in an Omni Hotel that would help attract events. They would open their own members-only club, similar to a country club, but without golf or tennis.

Most importantly, they would pursue associations that connected with not only the Cowboys, but with their practice facility: A sports medicine center operated by the largest not-for-profit health care system in Texas and a Cowboys Fit gym.

A mixed-use project on the site almost certainly would succeed, even without them. But the presence of the Cowboys brand — overlaid on a complex to be called The Star — would ramp up its timeline and, more importantly, give it a competitive edge.

“Everything we had been doing for 24 or 25 years that we had learned being with him, working as a family, was about how you could leverage the Cowboys and the brand to do great things,” Jerry Jr. said. “What all this is about is what he had taught us you could do.”

Jones describes his vision for the Cowboys upon buying the franchise for $140 million in 1989.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

Make the Cowboys into something more by making more from something associated with the Cowboys. That’s what Jones set out to do from the moment he bought the franchise in 1989.

From that original concept came an evolution that changed the league — and sports business.

Among them:
An aggressive marketing strategy that initially got Jones sued by the league and turned him into a pariah in old-guard circles, but eventually led to a makeover of the NFL’s shield-first approach to sponsorship — and proved Jones’ assertions that they’d make more money by leading with the teams.

The confidence that he not only could build a $1.2 billion football stadium, but could do it in a way that would allow him to command such high prices for everything available within it that it would pay off, paving the way for a similar approach in markets such as San Francisco and Atlanta and now Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

An understanding that if a business tactic worked for the Cowboys, it might work at some level for others, which led to the spawning of Legends, a joint venture with the New York Yankees that started out as a concessionaire but quickly evolved into a full-service consultancy that would sell seats, suites and sponsorships for other teams.

A creative approach to real estate development that led to the construction of The Star and served as proof of concept for St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke as he planned a vast project in Los Angeles, and gave other owners confidence to approve his team’s move there.

A willingness to buck the status quo that shook the league when it most needed shaking, such as when he led opposition to the broadcast committee’s decision to take a cut in rights fees, instead welcoming in the fledgling Fox network, driving both record rights fees and on-screen innovation.

Credibility based on success stacked upon success, which paved the way for Jones to go from oft-dismissed outlier to his position today as the league’s most influential voice.

At a small table in his office at The Star, Jones doodled parallel and intersecting lines on a paper napkin, tracing over some of them two and three times as he recounted his first few years as owner of the Cowboys. He has some favorite sayings, such as “tolerance for ambiguity,” and some favorite gestures, like holding a drinking glass with both hands to demonstrate a period wrought with such pressure it gave him the shakes.

You’re likely to hear one and see the other during conversations about those early Cowboys years. Jones hadn’t risked so much of the family fortune that his wife, Gene, “would be waiting tables” if he failed to right the franchise, but he had enough on the line to affect their lifestyle.

At the same time Jones was trying to stabilize the Cowboys finances, he was facing two lawsuits of more than $1 billion each tied to his oil and gas business. Firing iconic coach Tom Landry had made him the most hated man in Dallas. His choice to replace Landry, Jimmy Johnson, went 1-15 in his first season.

It was from there that Jerry Jones began his NFL journey.

“Taking it to the top after going though all those things buoyed me,” Jones said, thinking back to the sense of validation he felt when his teams won three Super Bowls in the ’90s and the franchise started turning profits. “It allowed me to be very aggressive. It let me, also, feel good that I was on the right path and this was the best way to grow the NFL.

“As (Atlanta Falcons owner) Arthur Blank told me — thank you, Arthur — you have led us, the owners, kicking and screaming to the point where we are today.”

The pyro cannons flared as Jones strode onto the stage at the Cowboys draft party at the Ford Center, the 12,000-seat, $250 million indoor stadium at The Star that the team shares with nine public high schools in the Frisco district.

It would be another couple of hours before the Cowboys would be on the clock, but the crowd was revved and ready, pressing toward the stage. Jones said the sort of things owners say in that situation, thanking the fans, hailing the public/private marriage that funded the spectacular facility and plugging sponsor Miller Lite. But then he went in a direction that distinguishes him, launching into a story that could have come from a locker room or pulpit.

At every corner, Jones has used the Cowboys brand to leverage and grow the business.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
Jones was a senior offensive lineman at Arkansas when, in the week leading up to a Cotton Bowl appearance that could determine the national champion, the team took a trip to Houston to get away from the hoopla. While there, they visited the soon-to-open Astrodome, so revolutionary at the time that it would become known as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

“I looked at that Astrodome and I thought: What could it be like to compete in something like this?” Jones said, his tone filled with wonder. “But more importantly, who could think of something like this? Who could even dream of building something like this? How does it happen? Where does it come from?”

“I knew walking in there when I was 20 that it could be done. And it was done by a human being. It was done by somebody that thought big. And it was done by somebody who thought they could do it. I knew I could build that AT&T Stadium. I knew I could.”

Jones’ voice cracked. Then, composing himself, he delivered a punch line that set the house afire.

“That AT&T Stadium is six damned times bigger than the Astrodome,” he shouted. “That’s confidence. When you get that in you and you feel like you can do something, you figure out how to do it.”

It was Knute Rockne meets Tony Robbins, meets Reverend Ike.

And it sold. Lord, it sold.

This is a gift that has served Jones well, first in the insurance business and then in oil and gas, where he made his fortune, then football, where he risked it and then multiplied it. He says he came by it naturally, with a father who put on country music shows and amateur talent contests to attract customers to the family supermarket.

By the time Jones bought the Cowboys, he had been around sports enough to understand the potential of its value in business. He knew what it meant to have the access to take a client to Augusta. He’d even seen the benefits in his own life. He recalled the way customers and other business associates in Arkansas lit up when he told stories from his days as a Razorback.

If there was economic power to be had from any affinity for the Cowboys, the previous management had unlocked little of it. Jones went to work selling a business relationship with the Cowboys as something more than a sign at the stadium or a desk drawer filled with season tickets.

“Early on, when we would pitch Bank of America or Miller Lite, he’d say, ‘Just act like I own half your business,’” Stephen Jones said, chuckling at the irony of the fact that, decades later, his father owns a stake in some of the companies that sponsor the Cowboys. “What would we do? If you owned half the Cowboys and I owned half your business, what would we be doing? Don’t think about it as I just get this, this and this. What would you do? How do we customize this package?”

There were executives from teams in other leagues taking that approach at the time. But it was rare in the NFL — and unheard of for an owner to be the one presenting it to sponsor prospects. As Cowboys sponsor revenue soared, the league took notice. Jones remembers addressing fellow owners at a meeting early on, explaining the tactics that were working so well for the franchise.

The Jones family — (from left) Stephen, Jerry, Gene, Charlotte and Jerry Jr. — employed Jerry’s “tolerance for ambiguity” in conceiving and building AT&T Stadium a decade ago.
Photo by: DALLAS COWBOYS

“We create relationships that are more than selling signs,” Jones told his colleagues. “If that means being at the docks with them when the trucks come in, that’s what we’ll do.”

After the presentation, Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams approached Jones.

“Jerry, I don’t believe I understand 2 percent of what you just said,” Adams said, “but I like your enthusiasm. I’m in.”

It’s a common response Jones gets to this day.

“He’s a great salesman,” said New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who took comfort from Jones’ reassurance that he’d spent wisely when he bought into the league at a then record price. “Sometimes, he’s speaking, and I’m not sure what he’s saying, but I’m still enthralled by his tone and his message. He just has that charisma about him and such positive energy.”

Soon after he bought the Cowboys, Jones went on a speaking tour with Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, who maintained his primary home in Dallas and raised his family there. While Hunt did not always agree with Jones — ask NFL owners about Jones, and they will preface what they say with the disclaimer that they don’t always agree with him — he often spoke of his admiration for the risk he took on the Cowboys, and his willingness to buck the status quo.

“Jerry Jones is one of the greatest salesmen, ever, in any business,” said Hunt’s son and current Chiefs Chairman Clark Hunt. “When he stands up in the room, I think a lot of us smile even before he begins speaking. We know what a great storyteller and orator he is. A lot of times his speeches go on for tens of minutes. But they are always entertaining and very persuasive.”

Jones’ role in clearing the way for upstart Fox to secure NFL TV rights was an early example.

His initially unpopular view that the NFL could get more from what already was thought to be a lionesque TV deal was based on conversations he had as an investor in an NBC affiliate in Little Rock, Ark., his hometown. Jones was puzzled by the station’s willingness to pay more for reruns of “I Love Lucy” than it could make back from its commercial spots. The station owner explained that the show was a loss leader, attracting viewers who then stayed to watch other programming.

When the networks complained that they were losing money on the NFL, Jones broke out his “I Love Lucy” story. He made a convincing enough argument that his fellow owners voted against the recommendation of the broadcast committee to take less for the league’s TV package, instead bringing in a new and highly motivated rights holder, Fox.

“He has the ability to sway minds,” said David Hill, former Fox Sports president. “He is so persuasive. Success begets success. Other owners are going to look at him and say, ‘He’s done it again. I should pay attention to him and I should listen to him.’ He has made things happen by the power of his argument.”

He argues forcefully, persistently and often passionately.

“When he is committed to a path or road or direction that he feels is the correct one, Jerry is a dog with a bone,” said Blank, the Falcons owner. “He will not let it loose until either he eats it or it kills him. People respect that with him.

“Jerry will challenge the status quo and will challenge things that don’t appear to make sense to him, even though they’re part of history or legacy. That’s a wonderful and unusual trait.”

There was no greater example of that than the events of January 2016, when the earth of the NFL moved and three teams ended up relocating as a result of a watershed league vote.

Jones’ ability as a salesman and motivator has pushed the Cowboys and the NFL for 28 years.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

For a decade, Jones had harped on and hollered about the fact that Los Angeles was without a team. Nothing happened. Deals came and went. Projects surged and sputtered. And then, a few years ago, St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke quietly began to put in place the pieces of a stadium project to dwarf all others: A $3 billion blend of sports and entertainment that Jones immediately saw as the ideal fit for the market.

Not only did Kroenke have a franchise with roots in the city, he also had the two qualities Jones thought most important to make an L.A. project go: An acumen for real estate development and the wealth to ride out the sort of financial storms that the Cowboys encountered while building AT&T Stadium.

If Kroenke was willing to bring all that to bear, Jones was on board as a supporter.

The other project the league was considering was a joint venture that would move the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders to a $1.8 billion stadium in Carson, about 12 miles south of the city. Lobbying for the Carson project was Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, the NFL’s longtime gatekeeper on stadium projects and chair of the committee vetting Los Angeles opportunities. If Richardson was for Carson, it likely would go to the post as the favorite.

“He (Jones) saw that and said, ‘I’m going to have to get in and do this,’” said Jerry’s daughter, Charlotte Jones Anderson. “I’m going to have to get in and be a pusher of it.”

The politicking, and resulting angst, that played out over the six months before the vote have been well-documented. Richardson crisscrossed the country, making the case on behalf of the Chargers and Raiders. Jones worked his magic for Kroenke.

“I really got on the soapbox,” Jones said. “I really did. I worked very hard and was very aggressive in meetings. On phone calls and in meetings away from league meetings, I worked as hard as I’ve ever worked on anything.”

During a pivotal league meeting in Chicago in 2015, both groups presented their proposals. Jones closed it with a raucous, at times profane, diatribe that forwarded the idea that L.A. needed to go to the owner best prepared to maximize it, which in his mind clearly was Kroenke.

“Stan has the acumen to go in with no help, knowing that the $3 billion is probably going to go to $4 billion, and he can write the check,” Stephen said, boiling down his father’s position. “So, for Jerry, it’s a no-brainer. When he sits there and verbalizes that to a membership, they can get their hands around it.”

By now, you know how this played out, and likely why. In spite of the committee’s recommendation otherwise, Kroenke got L.A. Stung by the defeat, which he took as a disregard for the decades he spent working on new stadiums, Richardson distanced himself from league affairs.

This was one of a few aspects of the deal that bothered Jones, and still does. He considers Richardson a friend and holds him in high regard. But they disagreed on a matter of the highest priority, so it was inevitable that they would cross swords. Jones wishes Richardson hadn’t come away feeling blind-sided by the vote. But he points out that never once did he suggest an owner he had spoken to keep the conversation to himself.

“The committee system works,” he said. “It’s a good one. But it should never supplant the individual owners being able to think it through and get it together. One of the strengths of the league is each one of the individual owners. If they were to give it energy and time, that’s a strength.

“That’s all very manageable — unless for any reason you think you’re managing the league with your little group. That’s not the way it works.”

Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, with Jones in 2006, has told Jones, “You have led us, the owners, kicking and screaming to the point where we are today.”
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

For a time, Jones was deeply troubled by the impact the Rams vote had on Mark Davis, whose team was in far worse shape in Oakland than Kroenke’s was in St. Louis. That was less about business than friendship and loyalty.

“Al was my closest friend in the NFL for years,” Jones reminded his fellow owners during one especially emotional session. “And Al’s not here to carry the water. His son is.

“I felt that in Los Angeles, what would be required and the financial commitment required might have gotten (Mark Davis) out over his skis. And I basically said that. I did. I told him, in front of all the owners.”

When Davis confronted Jones to say he was disappointed that he was working hard against him, Jones reminded him that he was the sole owner to attend his father’s memorial. “So Mark,” Jones said, “I am interested in you.”

In the months that followed, Jones proved that, working hard to help find Davis a soft landing in Las Vegas. Thanks to the groundwork he laid before the breakthrough in L.A., that project sailed through league approval.

The entire process served as punctuation — period, creeping toward exclamation point — on Jones’ progression from outlying rabble-rouser who could keep something from going against his interest to influential insider who would play through an end game without flipping over the board.

It helps that many of the current group of owners are more like Jones than the old-guard owners who bought into the league at a far cheaper price. But Hunt, for one, points to another significant shift.

“Early on he tended to be a contrarian on many issues and didn’t do the work to build a consensus,” Hunt said. “He does that very well now. Part of that is statements in the room at a meeting, but he also will take the time to call other owners and meet with owners when there is an important issue he has a view on.”

Jones, celebrating a play in 2007, has become more of a league insider in recent years.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

The oft-thought, but rarely spoken, observation here is that Jones will benefit financially from the three relocations in a manner disproportionate from the rest of the league. Kroenke has hired Legends to market his new stadium, and most expect Davis to do the same.

Jones doesn’t hide from the connection.

“The great economist Jesse Jones of Houston said that if you try to build a chain of success and have one link in that chain that you’re counting on somebody doing it for free or losing money, it will break every time,” he said. “I’m not being defensive about it. I’m just saying that’s what it takes to get people to come over sometimes.”

Jones sat centered at the head of the table in the Cowboys’ tricked-out new war room, Stephen and Charlotte at his left, coach Jason Garrett and Jerry Jr. at his right, a backlit, blue star behind them.

In front of them, at the end of a conference table with eight seats on each side, was a 21-foot-wide, seven-foot-high touch-screen video wall, made up of 15 individual screens that could be mixed and matched and combined. The walls that flanked them also were touch screens, populated by variations of the Cowboys’ color-coded draft board, with players ranked by position on some and by projected round on others.

“Looks like we’re about to land a ship on the moon, like NASA,” Jerry joked while showing the room off to a group of second-chance winners of the Texas Lottery, a Cowboys sponsor.

The Jones family took great care to make the war room high-tech and functional while designing the football operations side of The Star. They also made it tour friendly. Along the wall outside the entrance hang the original scouting reports on Cowboys greats, including Emmitt Smith and Troy Aikman.

Jones and coach Jimmy Johnson celebrate their second Super Bowl title in 1994.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
The fact that Jones has called the final shot in the Cowboys’ war room through each draft since his purchase of the team has brought frequent criticism from pundits — and sometimes exiting employees — who questioned his qualifications and motivations.

But his role in the room — soliciting input from scouts, coaches and the team’s medical staff, coaxing them along toward consensus and then serving as final arbiter of any surviving disagreement — really is less about football experience or acumen than it is leadership or management.

He is chief executive officer, not chief product officer.

In this year’s draft, the Cowboys’ priorities were apparent. They needed pass rushers and cover guys, and almost certainly would use their first three picks to acquire them. As the draft unfolded, it became clear they’d go with a pass rusher. The question was which one.

Jones took the room through a replay of conversations they’d had about the position during pre-draft meetings the previous two weeks. A day earlier, they had landed on the likelihood that a player they all liked, Michigan defensive end Taco Charlton, might be there for the taking.

After conferring with scouts and defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli, Jerry saw that they, Stephen and Garrett were on the same page. If the Cowboys weren’t wowed by a trade offer, they’d take Charlton.

Two picks ahead of Dallas, the Falcons traded up five slots to take a pass rusher, but not Charlton. Then the Buffalo Bills took a safety.

“Rod — you have a last-minute change of heart?” Jones asked Marinelli.

“Nope,” he said.

Not a word was said as Jones sat, silently, for the next three minutes. Always willing to listen to offers, Jones compared his thoughts during that span to those of an option quarterback, waiting until the last possible opportunity to turn up field or pitch. With six minutes still remaining, he knew what he wanted to do.

“Let’s put him in,” Jones said loudly, breaking the silence and setting off a round of applause and a series of handshakes, a ritual that generally follows each Cowboys pick.

“We needed the defensive end and this was the last Mohegan,” Jones said a day later, reconstructing the scene. “There was almost a little of me that wanted to cut it off before the phone did ring. Let’s take this one on in. I was that at peace with it.”

Jones and family, along with Cowboys coach Jason Garrett (third from left), are front and
center in the war room at the team’s headquarters during this year’s NFL draft.
Photo by: DALLAS COWBOYS

It was the sort of evening that Jones envisioned when he bought the team, and a privilege of ownership that he has protected jealously, resisting each time someone suggested he relinquish it.

“The exercise of being in that room with our people and having the aura around it — I don’t have that when I’m making decisions in oil and gas,” he said in his office the next day, shortly before heading back to the draft room for the start of the second round. “I make decisions here every day on oil and gas. But you really don’t have that type of room then, or when you decide to build a building or buy real estate. That draft has a real unique flair to it.

“That’s a little selfish reason you’re in the NFL and why you’re doing it.”

When Jones famously announced that he planned to be engaged in every aspect of the Cowboys — from “socks to jocks” was the phrase that marked his entry and often has haunted his tenure — it came as no surprise to his family.

Throughout their childhood, Jones was hyper-engaged, even as he was running an oil and gas business that kept him in Oklahoma almost as often as he was home in Little Rock. Jones’ face brightens when he recalls days coaching his sons’ peewee football teams. He’d fly back and forth from Oklahoma City to keep from missing practices. While others thought he was jotting notes during meetings, he was diagramming plays.

Even then, he knew it took talent to get the most from a system.

At Your Service

Jerry Jones' NFL committee membership

Committee Years
Broadcast Committee 1993-present
Management Council Executive Committee 1998-present
NFL Network Committee 2007-present
Pro Football Hall of Fame Committee 2007-present
Health and Safety Advisory Committee 2012-present
Committee on L.A. Opportunities 2006-2011
Player Dire Need Committee 2010
Business Ventures 2002-2007
Special Committee on League Economics 2004-2006
Committee to Select New NFL Commissioner 2005-2006
Competition Committee (only owner appointed to two separate terms) 1993-1997
1999-2000
NFL Films Executive Committee 1994-2000
NFL Enterprises Executive Committee 1995-2000
NFL Properties Executive Committee 1998-2000
Strategic Opportunities Committee 1990-1992

Source: Dallas Cowboys

“Personnel was always in him,” Stephen said, chuckling as he thought back to an example from their peewee days.

Their first experience with free agency came when the family’s housekeeper approached them with word that her son, who was Stephen’s age, might want to play football. Sizing her up at about 6 feet tall and better than 250 pounds, Jerry smiled invitingly.

“Why don’t you bring him over to the house?” he said.

The boy hadn’t ever played football, but he was a head taller than Stephen and lean and fast. Once he got a sense for the structure of the game, he turned into the team’s best running back.

Unfortunately, he came at a price. He lived on the south side of Little Rock, while the Jones family lived in West Little Rock, at least 20 minutes away. On days the team practiced, Jones drove to get his prized new back, ferried him to practice, then drove him home as dusk approached.

When he was jetting back and forth to Oklahoma City, it added a layer to an already hectic afternoon.

“Once Dad saw this guy — we were going to do whatever it took,” Stephen said, bursting into laughter. “We’re driving out there to get him and then taking him back around dark. He’d still have to drop me off and then go back to the airport. But here we go, all in the name of having a good football player.

“He was in the personnel business early and often.”

Constantly selling the Cowboys, Jones frequently engages with fans at AT&T Stadium.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

Jones’ engagement was not limited to his sons’ teams.

When his daughter, Charlotte, went off to college at Stanford, Jones and wife Gene were comforted by the fact that his company kept an office in Sacramento. He says he visited it six times the year before his daughter moved west.

“Her first year, we went out 36 times to that office,” he said, laughing. “Thirty-six times. After that I got an office in Palo Alto to conduct my affairs rather than Sacramento. Gene even went to class.

“We were awful.”

When Charlotte went on spring break, her parents played tour guides, hosting her friends. In Hawaii, Jerry was at the hotel pool early, laying out towels to save them seats together. In Spain, he and one of the girls came down with food poisoning and missed three days of the trip.

“Me and that girl are like that to this day,” Jones said, crossing his fingers. “I went to her wedding.”

When Jones was negotiating to buy the Cowboys, his daughter was working in Washington for an Arkansas congressman whose term was steeped in controversy. When things got bad, as they often did, she phoned her father, hoping for a sympathetic ear.

“Charlotte, that just builds character,” he would tell her. “Just grow up.”

“I think I’ve had enough character,” she told him after he closed on the franchise. “You want me down in Dallas?”

There was nothing he wanted more.

How 'Bout Them Cowboys

Regular-season and postseason records during Jerry Jones' 28-year reign as owner of the Dallas Cowboys

Season Record
1989 1-15
1990 7-9
1991 12-6*
1992 16-3^
1993 15-4^
1994 13-5*
1995 15-4^
1996 11-7*
1997 6-10
1998 10-7*
1999 8-9*
2000 5-11
2001 5-11
2002 5-11
2003 10-7*
2004 6-10
2005 9-7
2006 9-8*
2007 13-4*
2008 9-7
2009 12-6*
2010 6-10
2011 8-8
2012 8-8
2013 8-8
2014 13-5*
2015 4-12
2016 13-4*
Overall record: 257-216

Note: Dallas' playoff record under Jones is 14-11.
* Made the playoffs
^ Super Bowl champions
Source: NFL


“The greatest thing for me was that my father never saw gender, and never does, to this day,” Anderson said. “It doesn’t matter if the task goes to me or to Stephen or to Jerry, there is a level of confidence that I think I sometimes take for granted, because I don’t see myself as any different than my brothers. We’re all three together.

“I love the fact that he’s always had more confidence in me than I’ve ever had in myself. And I think that that has been something that I have been able to grow from. I would have never had that kind of opportunity because I don’t think I would have ever had that kind of confidence had I not had his guidance.”

While there is no doubt that the NFL has a long and storied history of families, the experience of the Jones clan differs from most of them because the next generation joined the patriarch in management from the start.

“Not only are they all three here with me,” Jones said, “but they’ve been with me through everything, practically from the start.”

It is worth noting that through the first two days of the draft, all three of Jones’ children flanked him at the end of the table. On the first day, each of them had one of their children with them. Jerry Jr.’s 11-year-old son, James, sat next to his father through all four hours of the first night, dutifully keeping track of the picks on a sheet of paper. Stephen’s son, John Stephen, a senior quarterback who led his team to a state championship at AT&T Stadium last year, mingled with other guests, at one point breaking away with Charlotte’s 16-year-old son, Paxton, to check out players on one of the touch screens.

As the time approached for the Cowboys to make the pick and the room quieted, the parents made sure the trio was seated around the conference table, listening in.

Jones smiled when reminded of the moment the next afternoon — not the same, wide salesman’s smile that he flashed a few hours earlier, while hovering over his vast land holdings. This one was softer, more reflective.

He was thinking about an afternoon at the Super Bowl in Houston earlier this year, when the entire Jones clan — he and wife Gene, three children and nine grandchildren — gathered in a suite provided by Hall of Fame President David Baker on the day he would be considered for enshrinement.

Before leaving, Baker explained what to expect. He’d get a phone call if the news was disappointing. A knock at the door would mean he’d been selected.

When the knock came, the room erupted.

“We all were in that room, together, when the head of the Football Hall of Fame knocked on that door,” Jones said, nodding, and then pausing. “Now that was a moment. And it was made so much better by who was standing in that room.”

Three generations of Joneses gathered in Houston when Jerry got word that he would be enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
Photo by: DALLAS COWBOYS

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