Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett, owner Jerry Jones and his son, executive vice president/COO Stephen Jones, watch earlier picks in the team’s “War Room” at their training facility at Valley Ranch while waiting to make their first pick on the first day of the NFL Draft, Thursday, April 30, 2015, in Irving, Texas. (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News)
Jerry Jones is heading into his 26th season as the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. In that time he’s spent his fair share in the public spotlight. You might feel you know everything about the man. You’re wrong. Here are 10 things you might not know about Jerry Jones.
1. He was a super market stock boy
One of Jones’ first jobs was to stock the shelves at one of his father’s supermarkets. It was there that he first showed his work ethic.
“I used to lock him up in the store with my main stock man, he and
another boy or two, and they would work all night stocking shelves
before holidays,” Pat Jones, Jerry’s father, told the Dallas Morning News in 1989. “He wasn’t afraid to put out. He knew about work.”
2. He lost $300,000 on a coin flip
February 25, 1989 —(l-r) Jerry Jones takes a question from the press during a press conference anouincing him as the new owner of The Cowboys. Tex Schramm and Bum Bright are in the background. Photographer: PRUITT, Richard Michael
When Jones was buying the Cowboys from H.R. “Bum” Bright, the two had agreed on most terms, but couldn’t settle a dispute on who was responsible for an advance Bright made three to four weeks before Jones’ purchase of the team, so they agreed to flip a coin for it.
The flip went heads. Bright won. Jones had to pay. Later, once the deal was officially complete, Bright encased the coin, mounted it on a block and gave it to Jones with a message: “You will never know if this is a two-headed coin.”
The gift remains in Jones’ home.
3. His low-point in Dallas had nothing to do with the Cowboys
For all the ups and downs he’s had as the owner of the Cowboys, perhaps Jones’ lowest point in Dallas came in the 1970s, before he even bought the team. In business without the help of his father for the first time, Jones flew to Love Field airport and tried to rent a car.
When he handed his credit card over, the person behind the counter made a phone call, then cut the card in half.
“You had better learn to pay your bills, young man,” the person told Jones.
4. The three losses that made him cry
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman (8) is crunched by San Francisco 49ers right end Rickey Jackson, left, and tackle Bryant Young during the fourth quarter of their NFC championship game Sunday, Jan 15, 1995, in San Francisco. The 49ers won, 38-28, and advance to the Super Bowl against the San Diego Chargers.
Jones said in 2014 there have only been three losses in his ownership tenure with the Cowboys that have made him cry.
The first: The 1995 NFC Championship game. The 49ers beat the Cowboys 38-28. The Cowboys fell down 21-0 early thanks to three turnovers.
“I knew we had the better team,” Jones said in 2014.
The second: The 2002 season opener, when the Cowboys lost to the Texans in Houston’s first ever game as a franchise.
“I was the leading proponent of getting Houston the team,” Jones said. “I wanted those fans to have their own team even though I knew at that time half of them were Cowboys fans. To go down and get beat on opening night by an expansion team was absolutely a low point.”
The third: The 2007 divisional round playoff loss to the Giants. The Cowboys were 13-3 and the No. 1 seed in the NFC. The Giants were a No. 5 seed that went 10-6, but they came out victorious with a 21-17 win.
“That’s where I went to the place I used to go to when they would call and tell me that I had just lost all of my money on a dry hole,’’ Jones said.
5. He travels with a big entourage, or at least he did
Jones might hold the record for the biggest entourage ever. His daughter, Charlotte Jones Anderson, told the Dallas Morning News in 1994 that Jones brought 1,200 people to Super Bowl XXVIII in Atlanta.This included family, friends, players’ friends and family and sponsors. Jones paid for 600 hotel rooms and chartered three private plans.
6. He almost bought the Chargers instead, despite being 23 years old and not having any money
(Michael Hogue/Staff Illustrator)
As a 23-year-old kid, Jones nearly bought the San Diego Chargers in 1966. Fresh out of college, he had secured promises from investors in Missouri and had agreed to an $5.8 million asking price with then-Chargers majority owner Barron Hilton.
A newspaper clipping of the possible deal found it’s way back to Pat Jones, Jerry’s father. Pat explained that the AFL was bad business, an unbroken history of negative cash flow. Jerry withdrew his offer.
Later that year, the AFL merged with the NFL and Hilton sold the Chargers for $10 million.
7. ‘The biggest whipping of my life’
Even as a young kid, Jones was good at persuading people. One time in grade school, Jones convinced his classmates to bring fudge to school and spread it around “like it was something else.” The kids did so gleefully, not realizing the consequences.
When the teacher saw, she was furious. Knowing Jones, she determined he was the main culprit.
“I got the biggest whipping of my life,” he recalled to the Morning News in 1996.
8. Blind date
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones poses with wife Gene (left) during a candlelight dinner at Mancuso’s Restaurant in Scottsdale, AZ Wednesday night. The team is in town to play in Super Bowl XXX this Sunday. Photographer: John F. Rhodes Date: 1-25-96
Jones met his wife, Gene, a former Miss Arkansas USA, in college at the University of Arkansas. They were on a blind date and then joined some friends at the state fair. Other guys were winning their dates teddy bears. Jerry couldn’t.
“I tried and tried, but couldn’t,” Jones told the Dallas Morning News in 1989, “so I went behind and bought her one.”
9. ‘He blew it all on the Cowboys’
When Jones was buying the Cowboys in 1989, the price was $70 million for the franchise, $70 million for the leasing rights and $30 million in overdue bills. Banks, concerned about the Cowboys’ finances, would only loan him $34 million.
Jones used $77 million of his money and gave the team a $20 million loan. To guarantee the $34 million loan from the bank he used his own receivables and assets as collateral.
“I was scared to death that my family legacy would be, ‘Dad or Granddad had some money, but he blew it all to buy the Cowboys,’” Jones told the Morning news in 2012.
10. Honest mistake
February 24, 1989 – Former University of Miami coach Jimmy Johnson, left, and Arkansas oilman Jerry Jones, along with their wives, dine at a Dallas restaurant. At the time the picture was taken when Jones had not yet bought the cowboys and Jimmy Johnson was still the coach of Miami. Photographer: J. Mark Kegans
Jones is infamous for eating with Jimmy Johnson at Tom Landry’s favorite Mexican food restaurant the day before he would purchase the Cowboys and subsequently fire Landry to hire Johnson. It turn’s out his wife Gene was inadvertently responsible for the controversy.
Gene used to shop in Dallas and when Jerry was going to Dallas to negotiate the deal, she told Jerry about a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican food place she had found in a recent trip.
“I said it was out of the way and no one would ever see him or recognize him there,” Gene told the Morning News in 1996. “I had no idea it was Tom Landry’s favorite place. That’s really how it happened. There was no deceit involved.”
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