Jerry Jones
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses of the name Jerry Jones, see Jerry Jones (disambiguation)
Jerrel Wayne "Jerry" Jones (Born on October 13, 1942 in Los Angeles, California) is the owner of the Dallas Cowboys NFL franchise and the Dallas Desperados AFL franchise.
Jones was born in Los Angeles, California. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to North Little Rock, Arkansas. He was a star running back at North Little Rock High School and eventually received a scholarship to play guard at the University of Arkansas. Among his Arkansas teammates were Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer, both of whom he would later hire to coach the Cowboys. While at Arkansas, Jones was a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity.
After several unsuccessful business ventures (including passing up the opportunity to purchase the AFL's San Diego Chargers in 1967 for the asking price of $5.8 million), he began an oil and gas exploration business in Oklahoma, Jones Oil and Land Lease, which became phenomenally successful. His company, a private family asset, currently does natural resource prospecting.
He is perhaps most famous for purchasing the NFL's Dallas Cowboys in 1989 from Bum Bright, Since then, in addition to being the owner, he has also taken on general manager duties. Of all the owners in professional sports, he is considered to be one of the ones most involved, on a day-to-day basis, with his team. He can be seen on the sidelines at every Cowboys game.
After the 1993 Super Bowl victory, reports began to surface in the media that Jones was taking credit for the Cowboys two consecutive championships. Jones made the statement that "any one of 500 coaches could have won those Super Bowls" given the type of talent that Jones had drafted and signed for the team. Jones also stated to reporters at a late night cocktail party that he intended to replace Johnson with former University of Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer. The next morning, however, Jones famously denied those reports by stating that it "was the whiskey talking". Shortly thereafter, Switzer replaced Johnson as the Cowboys head coach.
Jones was named Enemy No. 1 (least favorite sports personality) by Sports Illustrated, in three states by opinion polls (Delaware, Texas, and Virginia). [1] He is often vilified by fans who remain bitter at Jones' unceremonious firing of fan-favorite coach Tom Landry in favor of Jimmy Johnson upon his purchase of the team in 1989.
