Of the various witnesses who testified during the Sunday Ticket trial, only one owner testified live in court.
On the eighth (and part of the ninth) day of the proceedings, June 17, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones took the stand.
He wasn’t the only owner who testified. Previously, deposition testimony from Patriots owner Robert Kraft was played for the jury. However, Kraft did not testify in court. (At one point during the Jones testimony, the NFL’s lawyer inadvertently called Jones “Mr. Kraft.”)
Jones wasn’t as loquacious as he has been in other settings. In explaining that his family owned and operated a grocery store, however, he offered a story that created an entertaining image of a young Jerry Jones.
“Momma was involved full-time, and Dad, too, and so we all worked,” Jones said. “And when I was about nine, I used to have Momma put a little bowtie on me and I would greet the customers at the door. And if she winked, then I knew the customer was one that I could push her basket around, if I helped her get her cans out of the shelf, she might give me a little tip.”
As to the much bigger business he purchased in 1989, Jones said he gives himself a salary of roughly $250,000 per year. He was asked if he has ever taken a profit from the team.
“I have not,” he said at page 1,562 of the transcript. “Any available cash or capital that is generated within the operation of the team, I have reinvested and put it back into the team and stadium and facilities and things like that. So I don’t want to imply that it hasn’t been positive, the use of the money. I just haven’t taken it out to go buy a suit or a shirt with.”
Jones defended the league’s history of revenue sharing, even if it keeps him from spending his way to Super Bowl wins. He said that, if the 32 teams were to sell out-of-market TV rights individually, he would no longer want to share revenue. (Of course, the teams already have agreed to share all TV revenue from any source, with a unanimous vote of the 32 owners required to override it.)
“The Cowboys, in my mind, if we’re sitting here dreaming, we could be a bigger deal,” Jones said of a league without shared revenues. “But we would have been equivalent of the big fish in a smaller pond. I had rather -- if you look at our fan base as a pond, I’d rather have a much bigger, much broader, much engaged fan base for the NFL and have to fight it out and be 25 years before I get to a Super Bowl. I’d rather the Cowboys compete in that kind of environment because it’s more exciting for our fans. And it not only works and has worked better than anybody could have ever imagined, it just is better for the fans.”
It also results in a league that makes more money for everyone, even though he made this statement at page 1,571, line 24 of the transcript: “I don’t know that I care that much about the money.”
He admitted that he relishes the fact that people dislike the Cowboys, because it makes the league more compelling to have a good villain.
“What is so important is that you are substantive, that you are interesting,” Jones said. “The facts are that probably well over half the fans of the NFL don’t like the Cowboys and want to kick our ‘you know what’ every time we get out there. And I say that in respect to everybody here. But that’s the way it is because they don’t like me, and they probably don’t like me to some degree if they pay that much attention to it. But it makes us interesting, that the -- it’s so much more than a score or so much more than a tackle. It is a manifestation of an interest, something to support. Yes, it’s my town against your town, but it’s even more than that. And we’ve been able to put that -- by taking it to free television all over this country, we’ve been able to take that and have it as an experience for more fans.”
And more money for the league. But he doesn’t care that much about the money.
Throughout the case, the league was careful to craft a message for the jury that it cares about the fans, the fans, the fans — and not the money, the money, the money. At page 1,574, Jones laid it on a little thick, even by his standards.
“But what it is, it adds just a little bit of a respite for people that really are getting their fannies kicked and really do have some worries,” Jones said. “I had a coach one time say, ‘Do you know the pressure it puts me under? Don’t vote for going for two after you score a touchdown. Don’t vote for that. That’s just added pressure to me as coach. Please don’t vote for that, Mr. Jones.’
“And I said pressure. I said those people sitting out in the stands and those millions that are watching on television, a lot of them have got to go to the bank or they go to work and they’ve to go in there and they don’t know -- they’re going in maybe to ask to have their note renewed or maybe for more, and they don’t know what it’s going to be like. That’s pressure in life. That’s pressure.
“What we should be is a respite away from that, and that’s why it’s so important that the most fans we can get, get to see that. If we’re anything for society, we’re a respite, a way from the real heroes that are educating people, that are creating jobs and out here making this show go.”
Jones’s testimony also included plenty of questions about a lawsuit he filed against the NFL in the 1990s, as he tried to secure the right to sell Cowboys merchandise on his own, away from the collective league structure.
His lawsuit accused the league of maintaining an “illegal cartel” that, if broken up, “will permit [the Cowboys] and other member clubs to engage in spirited competition with one another and with the NFL in the licensing of professional football marks.”
The message from the plaintiffs was clear. If it’s good enough for Jones to compete with the other franchises over merchandising, why not compete over out-of-market TV rights?
His lawsuit against the league also alleged that ""the equal sharing of profits does not, in fact, lead to competitive balance,” and that “the sharing of profits can create just the opposite effect, leaving poor-performing teams with no incentive to spend more on players or strive to improve.”
To prove that point, the lawsuit Jones filed against the league pointed out that the Buccaneers won fewer games than any team from 1980 to 1990 but had the highest profits of any team during that same period.
Profit. Money. That’s ultimately what it’s all about.
As the saying goes, whenever someone says it’s not about the money, it’s always about the money.
It’s fitting, then, that Jones actually said, “I don’t know that I care that much about the money.”
One thing is certain. He’ll be caring the money about it if/when he has to come up with $440 million, which will represent his share of the $14.1 antitrust liability the league is currently facing.