Cowboys owner Jerry Jones does two radio appearances per week on the team’s flagship station, 105.3 The Fan in Dallas/Fort Worth. He might not be doing that anymore. Or he might be doing it with a new cast of on-air characters.
Jerry got pissed on Tuesday when faced with non-softball questions about a franchise he recently described as being in the “proverbial shit hole.”
After making it clear there won’t be an in-season head coaching change, Jones began to bristle in response to questions about whether he has the right players for his team, given issues with execution.
“Well, first of all, where you gonna go to get any players?” Jones said. “Seriously? Where are you gonna go to get any players for next week against San Francisco?”
After he concluded his word salad, the questions got a little more pointed. And Jerry started to get upset in response to a question from co-host Shan Shariff.
“I think the counter back when you said ‘where are you gonna get the players, you can’t get them this week’ is — and you’re aware of all the offseason topics—"
“But what is your counter?” Jerry said, interrupting Shariff. “What is your damn counter?”
It slowly but surely went downhill from there, with Jones eventually getting very defensive about criticism for his lack of offseason moves.
“I remember those criticisms very well,” Jones said. “OK? So what? So what? What’s your point? What’s your point? What’s your point?
“Listen, let me tell you what I’ll do. Let me tell you what I’ll do about it. I will let us sit down and look at the decisions we’ve made over the last several years, OK? I’ll look at it. Now if you think I’m interested on a damn phone call with you over the radio and sitting here and throwing all the good out with the dishwater, you’d have got to be smoking something over there this morning. I’m not. And I really don’t, and I don’t even want our listeners listening to me talk about — This is not your job. Your job isn’t to let me go over the reasons that I did something and I’m sorry that I did it. That’s not your job. . . . That’s not your job or I’ll get somebody else to ask these questions, men. . . . .No, no. I’m not kidding. I’m not kidding.
“You’re not gonna figure out . . . what the team is doing right or wrong. If you are, or any five or 10 like you, you need to come to this [ownership] meeting I’m going to today. There’s are 32 teams here. You’re geniuses. . . . You all really think you’re gonna sit here with a microphone and tell me all of the things I’ve done wrong and without going over the rights?
“Now, listen, we both think we’re talking to a lot of great fans and a lot of great listeners. And I am very sorry for what happened out there Sunday. I’m sick about what happened Sunday. And I’m not talking to these yay-hoos on the end of this phone. I’m talking to you, the fans, that are listening this morning. And we can spend a lot of time going over zigging and zagging on the stupidest things I ever done that anybody has ever analyzed is buy the Cowboys. It was an idiot that did that. So idiot things can turn into good decisions. Smart things can turn into bad decisions. The facts are that when you make one you don’t really know whether it’s gonna be good or not at the time.”
It’s as defensive as Jerry has even been. Given that he talks to the media as many as three times per week during the season, it was inevitable that he’d take issue with questioning, even if it wasn’t all that aggressive.
He doesn’t want to be asked about the mistakes he has made, at least not without being praised for the good decisions. And he wants fans to keep an eye on the good decisions, given that they might be inching toward making the decision to not pay attention to his team.
That’s why he bristled. He’s not upset about being asked a tough question. He’s upset about being asked a tough question that comes too close to justifying, and spreading, fan apathy.
For Jones, apathy is the worst thing that can happen. And it’s something he’s managed to avoid through nearly 30 years of no appearances in the NFC Championship.