The lobby bar in Cleveland was closing before Jerry Jones was ready to leave. He recently had purchased the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Stadium and wasn’t about to let a bartender tell him he couldn’t purchase another round.
Jones excused himself and went to the house phone. In a matter of minutes, room service delivered drinks to the lobby. Another day, another deal. Jones could live with himself.
Tell him the rules and he will find a way to beat them. He has threatened to buy entire bars just to keep them open. The man has no closing time.
The September day NFL Properties sued Jones for $300 million for violating rules against selling trademarks and logos on his own, the league’s renegade called them “cheapskates” and accused them of ruining his clam chowder by serving the lawsuit while he was eating.
He responded with a $750 million countersuit, claiming he is within the law to market the Cowboys in his stadium and charging that other teams, including the Bears, routinely circumvent NFL Properties guidelines and are not targeted for harassment like his Cowboys. If the Bears, for example, do a deal with Pizza Hut, it is a technical violation because Pizza Hut is owned by Pepsi-Cola and the NFL is aligned with Coca-Cola. And you thought football was a game.
Surely, Jones will have another surprise on his plate on Thanksgiving Day as fellow lodge members chew on their wishbones and watch the Cowboys play the Kansas City Chiefs. He cannot possibly allow another national stage to pass without grabbing the spotlight, the microphone, the podium, the whole curtain. Break a leg, Jerry.
That would seem to be the prevailing sentiment from owners left in Jones’ considerable wake. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who appointed a committee of four to try to settle the first lawsuit, says Jones has “isolated” himself from the reason of his peers.
The day after Browns owner Art Modell explained his intention of moving from Cleveland to Baltimore at an owners meeting near Dallas, the headline in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram read:
“Browns Owner Steals Attention from Jerry Jones”
Jones claims his ideas will help close the gap between the $100 million in annual revenue the Cowboys glean and the $50 million taken in by the Cincinnati Bengals. It is a gap caused by the owners’ own unwillingness to share certain revenue generated by stadium deals and luxury seating. Because Jones is one of only a handful of owners who also controls his stadium, the gap is difficult to control. It is the gap Modell blamed for fleeing Cleveland.
“When Jerry Jones signs Deion Sanders, he goes to his checkbook. When (Patriots owner) Bob Kraft signs Drew Bledsoe to a $42 million contract, he goes to his checkbook. I sign Andre Rison and had to scrounge around for $5 million to any bank in town that would lend it to me,” Modell railed. “I ran out of the capacity to borrow and to be competitive. I can make a good buck for a year by being 2-14. Next year my seat base (season tickets) of 38,000 will go to 18,000. Then what?”
Jones is sure individual teams can market themselves in their unique areas better than NFL Properties can and that such marketing will provide incentive for all to increase revenue streams and provide franchise stability. Tagliabue and others disagree.
“It’ll hurt because it has the potential to reduce the amount that is shared,” Tagliabue said. “It will exacerbate the difference between the haves and have-nots (although) there is potential to grow revenue in certain areas. He has isolated himself from other owners. He hasn’t been able to convince them of a compromise.”
Modell is sure Jones has ulterior motives, such as following the lead of Notre Dame’s independent television contract and breaking away from the NFL’s lucrative shared TV deal.
“He can’t make $40 million a year on his own,” Modell said.
Jones scoffs at the notion he would even try, pointing out that any change in the sharing of the television contract would require a unanimous vote of 30.
“I believe that revenue sharing in professional sports is critical to the overall balance and success of a league,” Jones wrote in his Dallas newspaper column in August. “Would I like to change the way our revenues for television and game tickets are equally shared? Absolutely not.”
What we have here is a failure to trust.
Robert Baade, economics professor at Lake Forest College who has studied the NFL and the relationship of stadiums and cities, calls Jones “short-sighted” because he is “trading media revenues that are shared possibly against stadium revenues that are not shared.”
“In pursuit of the best deal and the most revenue, individuals are looking to stadium revenue as a key to their franchise’s value and they’re not thinking about the cartel and the cartel’s interests,” Baade said. “The NFL is flirting with economic disaster. Baseball did it and look where it got them. This is the manifestation of the exercise of unmitigated greed. We’ll see how it plays itself out, but I think I understand economic imperatives well enough to know we’re at the beginning of a cycle rather than the end.
What the NFL can do to corral Jones is unclear. To nag him, it could take away the 29-year tradition of a Thanksgiving game in Dallas. This is an idea Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt has supported anyway in the interest of sharing the exposure.
Jones’ motives are clear to skeptics.
“He gets up in meetings and says, `Mark my words. These franchises are going to be worth a billion dollars someday,’ ” said one general manager.
If Jones believes every team in every market can match the magnetism of the Cowboys, he is reluctant to explain. His pontifications “are short on details,” said league executive Joe Browne.
“In the market he’s in and the one the Bears are in, we would gain an advantage,” said Bears director of marketing Ken Valdiserri. “I’m not sure it’s for the best of the league in the long run.”
“We are interested in competing and winning,” said San Francisco 49ers President Carmen Policy. “He seems interested in dominating and destroying.”
Jones has mentioned quotas and formulas for sharing marketing, but there has been no progress in a settlement of the lawsuits, according to Vikings President Roger Headrick, also president of NFL Properties. Headrick said Jones offers few specifics on a plan.
“It’s like we can talk about that after we give up the trademarks,” Headrick said.
Despite the reservations, Jones is such a compelling presence that fellow owners can’t help being fascinated.
“His marketing skills are the best I’ve ever seen in my life,” Kraft said. “He raises some legitimate points. This is 1995 and we’re coming into the millenium. It’s the age of the Internet and we have to think differently about certain things.”
It was Jones who helped convince owners not to accept Tagliabue’s proposal to give back television revenue to extend the former contract. The result was a switch from CBS to Fox and a bigger contract than anyone had imagined.
“My personal philosophy regarding change–and progress–is that innovation is not a spectator sport,” Jones said. “You better be one of the group that is spearheading change and pushing the envelope.”
Jones loves to relate the cartoon despicting one buzzard telling another: “Patience, heck. I’m going to kill something.”
Rivals, like Thanksgiving turkeys, don’t want to become the victims.
