Valley Ranch is long gone. So too Tom Landry. And, for that matter, also any on-field success associated with the franchise.
Yet, even 36 years later, the reverberations of what transpired on February 25, 1989 can still be felt by the Dallas Cowboys. It remains one of the biggest moments in the history of America’s Team:
The night Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys, and immediately replaced the legendary Landry with college coach Jimmy Johnson.
At the time, Jerry was 46. Today, in the middle of an almost 30-year Super Bowl drought, he is 82.
He paid $140 million for the team and Texas Stadium. Last year Forbes estimated the value of the Cowboys at $10 billion. Pretty decent ROI for a deal that almost didn’t happen.
Jones loves to revisit the immense risk he took in buying the failing franchise from previous owner Bum Bright.
In 1988 the Cowboys went 3-13. There was growing criticism that the modern NFL game had passed Landry by. And the business of America’s Team was in shambles, reportedly losing $1 million per month.
Dallas TV station NBC 5 broke the news, and a Dallas Morning News photo of Jones and Johnson dining at popular Tex-Mex restaurant Mia’s went viral before “viral” was a thing.
The Saturday night press conference was broadcast live on every DFW TV station, and it still feels surreal to this day.
Jones claims that for years he broke out in a cold sweat when revisiting memories of that night when he introduced himself to the world as being an owner who would be in charge of everything from “socks to jocks.”
“I’ve talked to doctors about it,” Jones said before his 2017 induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “They all said it was normal because I was suffering from tremendous stress in those days. It’s my own version of post-traumatic stress syndrome … and that I can talk about it now without tearing up shows how far I’ve come.”
After a sobering 1-15 introduction to the NFL, the Cowboys quickly won three Super Bowls in four years and were the league’s team of the 1990s. But since winning Super Bowl XXX after the 1995 season, they have won only five playoff games and Jerry, it’s safe to say, isn’t quite as popular.
