When Jerry Jones fired Jimmy Johnson, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys sold his soul to prove that he’s in charge. Now his ego has made America’s Team an NFL laughingstock, but it’s fans like me who are in hell.

by Gary Cartwright

Following the stumbling and bumbling of the Dallas Cowboys this past summer, I began obsessing on Jerry Jones’s goofy grin. The grin is a Jones trademark and an enigma that has puzzled many an unsmiling and frustrated Cowboy devotee. Blackie Sherrod, the incomparable Dallas newspaper columnist, long ago identified the expression and labeled the Cowboys’ owner and general manager “Smiley Jones,” a moniker not without irony. But what are we to make of this dippy turn of the mouth? At a glance it seems pleasant enough, the sweet innocence of a baby with gas. It implies a generous helping of ego, self-satisfaction, and arrogance. Some see it as the smirk of a cobra, ruthless and deadly. Or maybe it’s merely the smile of a fool. As I watched the Cowboys during training camp and the preseason, lurching about like left-footed geese, regressing into what is sure to be a milestone season of despair, I reached a discomforting conclusion. It’s all of the above.

The news from Valley Ranch is bad, my friends, worse than any of us dared imagine. The 58-year-old Jones has lost it—if indeed he ever had it—and it ain’t coming back. The mystique and majesty that permitted this franchise to win five Super Bowls while posing as America’s Team are history, at least as long as Jones rules. Meet the new chumps of pro football, America’s Losers. How did a football club that dominated the NFL for the first half of the nineties take such an abysmal dive? Was it the advent of the salary cap? Or free agency? Or a series of injuries that shortened the careers of Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Jay Novacek, and other quality players? Certainly these are factors. But this team has rotted from the top down. Blame the man behind the grin. Blame his dictatorial arrogance, his obsessive need to prove that he too is a real football guy, his stubborn refusal to hire the real article to run this operation. As veteran NFL writer Frank Luksa observed recently in the Dallas Morning News, Jones suffers from “delusions of adequacy.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. (more…)

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Jones insists Campo is the coach, not him

by Chris Mortensen

Oct. 10, 2001

Jerry Jones really is a good man. He is a glass-half-full optimist. He has a wonderful heart. He loves his family.

And, yes, he loves his football team. I did say his team. He is owner, president and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys.

Is he “Coach Jones,” too, as I fondly jest with him?

“No, I am not,” said Jones. “Dave Campo is the head coach of the Cowboys.”

Campo’s status as head coach of America’s (former) Team has been under scrutiny since the day he took the job. The most recent attack on his credibility came Sunday when the Dallas Morning News reported — using Jones as a primary source — that Campo must share player substitution decisions with the owner, even on game day.

“Let me be real clear: Dave, on game day, makes the decision as to who starts and who is going in and out of the game,” said Jones. “It does Dave a disservice to suggest otherwise.” (more…)

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