When he bought the Cowboys in 1989, Jerry Jones had zero qualifications to be the team’s General Manager. But he was the owner, and that’s all that mattered.
Thirty-five years later, Jones has plenty of experience at the job he wasn’t qualified to do. And he recently got feisty — and profane — in defending his current ability to do the job.
“I’ve done it all,” Jones told Clarence E. Hill, Jr. of the new AllDLLS.com. “So I have an ordinate amount of confidence that fuck, if anybody can figure out how to get this shit done, I can figure out how to get it done. I’ve been there every which way from Sunday, and have I busted my ass a bunch, a bunch. And there’s nobody living that’s out cutting and shooting that can’t give you a bunch of times they busted their ass. So hell no, there’s nobody that could fucking come in here and do all the contracts . . . and be a G.M. any better than I can.
“Plus, I’m where the buck stops. When it fucks up, I got to cover it. And so there you can’t give anybody enough. Can’t give. There’s nobody can do it.”
He’s right. But there’s also no accountability, because the owner can’t be fired.
Still, he’s accountable to those in the media who would criticize him. Unlike other owners, who meddle while hiding behind General Managers and coach, Jones owns it. And he has for three and a half decades.
“I fucking have had hundreds of [bad days],” Jones said. “I’m emotional about it sometimes. Well, running this thing, that’s who I want to make the last call. Now, when I can’t fucking think, when I’m old and I can’t even do it . . . but I’m a long way from not being able to do it too.”
Why not hire someone else to be the G.M.?
“The reason I don’t let somebody else be the G.M. is because I don’t have anybody that I will let do it to actually do it right,” Jones said. “And they’re gonna have to come to me and because I know where it is that you’re going to pay for it.”
So he does it because he doesn’t trust anyone else to do it. And because he likes it.
“If I didn’t give a shit, if this wasn’t fun for me to do, or interesting for me to do, whatever you want to call . . . the facts are, I really would rather be fucking around like this,” Jones said. “The point is I love this. And you know I do.”
Regardless, the results speak for themselves. For the first 30 Super Bowls, the Cowboys played for the right to play in the Super Bowl 16 times. For the last 28, zero.
No other G.M. would have survived that. And plenty of others from the group Jones deems to be not good enough have won championships.
The bottom line is he does it because he can. Because there’s no one to tell him not to. And because the fans keep giving him their money, time, and attention.
If that would ever end — if the fans would ever organize and ignore the Cowboys until he hires a G.M. — Jones would have a tough decision to make. With the Cowboys still “America’s Team” despite nearly three decades of not-good-enough, he’s more than good enough to keep doing what he’s done.