There’s an old saying in American business. The customer is always right.
In the rare business with strictly limited supply, the seller is always right.
And that pretty much summarizes the NFL’s relationship with those who buy its restricted, and ridiculously popular, inventory.
The latest example comes from Tuesday’s contentious interview between Jerry Jones and 105.3 The Fan, the team’s flagship radio station, and its aftermath.
Yes, 105.3 The Fan has secured the privilege of carrying the radio broadcasts of the team’s games. And it’s indeed a privilege in the eyes of the Cowboys, because there’s only one station that can buy the rights. If that station doesn’t play nice, a competitor might end up with the rights.
And so folks like Jerry Jones, who owns his own team’s media operation and who has a significant role of the management of the league’s in-house media conglomerate, think they can set expectations and draw lines that can’t be crossed.
Look closely at what Jones had to say about Tuesday’s kerfuffle with his flagship station, via Jon Machota of TheAthletic.com.
“I don’t know that I would go as far as [calling] the volume connotation as yelling, OK?” Jones said. “But the facts are that if I’m going to be grilled by the tribunal, I don’t need it to be by the guys I’m paying. I can take it from fans and take it from other people. I take a lot of pride in how fair and how much I try to work with the media, we’re brothers and sisters. But I was a little frustrated there today. . . . The wrong ones were doing the questioning. Now, if those had been real fans sitting there or if there had been people that knew what they were talking about, football people, I might have had a different answer.”
First, and most importantly, he’s not paying the folks at 105.3 The Fan. But the relationship allows him to act like he is, because he can always take that relationship somewhere else, if the folks at 105.3 The Fan don’t play nice.
Consider co-host Shan Shariff’s reaction to Jerry’s comments: “Is this real life??? I WISH Jerry Jones paid me. He insults us again and we’ve had back and forth over WAY bigger things in our 14 years. I truly don’t understand what the hell is going on.”
Second, Jerry was and is way out of line to call the hosts “yay-hoos” during the interview and then to say they’re not “real fans” (as if they’re supposed to act that way, which they aren’t) and they don’t know what they’re talking about (as if guys who spend a sizable chunk their professional lives following the sport and the team don’t).
But that’s one of the consequences of leagues and teams owning media companies. When the companies they own operate within a clear set of guardrails, the leagues and the teams expect their “broadcast partners” to do the same.
The weirdest part about all of it is that Jerry has been appearing twice per week on 105.3 The Fan for years, and he has consistently answered real questions, tough questions. Without getting mad or upset and at all times embracing the idea (as he testified at this year’s Sunday Ticket antitrust trial) that any publicity is good publicity. That the key is to be interesting.
Today was definitely interesting, but only because Jerry bristled at the hosts asking questions aimed at getting answers the fans want.
Why didn’t he do more in the offseason to address the flaws in the roster? Why didn’t he extend the contracts of CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott early enough to create cap space that could be used to improve the team?
Of course he can’t do anything about it now. The point is he could have done something then, if he didn’t inexplicably delay, delay, and delay.
Why did those questions set him off? Because he has no good answers. Sure, he’ll string a bunch of words together that might or might not make sense, but the fans are starting to see through the grift.
As we said months ago, he’s not nearly as concerned about winning a Super Bowl as he pretends to be. He’s concerned about keeping the ratings high and the stadium full and retaining the title of “America’s Team.”
America has figured him out. Cowboys fans are figuring him out. While Jerry and Stephen Jones and the folks they’re hired to find talent are able to put together a consistently relevant team, they haven’t been able — for nearly three decades — to get past the first two rounds of the playoffs.
This year, the misplaced frugality and inexplicable foot-dragging has resulted in a regression of the franchise. And, again, there’s nothing he can say to gaslight the fan base.
Jerry has said many times that we’d be surprised by the size of the check he’d write if it would guarantee a Super Bowl win. We’d be surprised not because of how big it would be, but because of how small it would be.
Small is the operative word. Today, the biggest man in the state where everything is bigger came off, for the first time in a long time, as small.