Happy 31st Anniversary to Jerry Jones and His Cowboys
DALLAS - On this day in 1989, Jerry Jones purchased the Dallas Cowboys for $140 million. The purchase made history as the first time anyone had ever paid more than $100 million for a sports team and drastically changed the trajectory of America’s team.
"I bought the Dallas Cowboys, strapped on, really, that fear of failure,'' Jerry said during his 2017 Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement. "For someone like me, (there was) a fear of business heights at that time, because I'd busted a few times, it was like stringing a tightrope from the Empire State Building to the next tallest building in New York and then starting your ass off on that tightrope with no net down there. You have to make this thing work.''
He made it work.
READ: Jerry Jones' NFL Anniversary: His Three Best Cowboys Moves
Thirty-one years ago, the Cowboys franchise looked much different than it does today. Under owner H.R. “Bum” Bright, the Cowboys were reportedly hemorrhaging $1 million every month off the field ... and on the field they were coming off a season during which they had a 3-13 record.
"Jocks and socks,'' Jerry famously said back then regarding his plan for hands-on involvement.''
Fast-forward 31 years with Jones, now 77 years old, at the helm and the Cowboys’ worth totals $5.5 billion (per Forbes). Do the math: $5.5 billion is a value 20 percent more than the next most valuable sports team, baseball's New York Yankees. The Star’s brand is proving to be exponentially powerful and generating an operating income of $420 million during the 2018 season, more than any team in any sport has ever earned.
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Numbers aside (albeit the numbers are important to Jones), the franchise, NFL and the city of Dallas wouldn’t be the same without the colorful owner. After firing the only coach the team ever knew in Tom Landry, ending Landry's 29-year run, Jones hired his old Arkansas college teammate Jimmy Johnson. Shortly thereafter, the Cowboys improved from going 1-15 in 1989 to winning three Super Bowl titles.
As owner, Jones restored Dallas’ winning tradition, advancing to postseason 14 times and winning 11 division crowns. His vision influenced the $1.2 billion AT&T Stadium in Arlington and state-of-the-art The Star headquarters in Frisco. He has his detractors, of course. But his leadership echoes throughout the NFL in marketing, branding, sponsorship, television, and stadium management.
Jones’ impact on the NFL over the past three decades led to his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017.
In honor of the Dallas Cowboys and Jones’ 31st anniversary, here is a look at what life was like in 1989:
· In the NBA Finals, the Detroit Pistons swept the Los Angeles Lakers to win the franchise's first championship.
· Seinfeld, also known as a show about nothing, premiered in the US in 1989.
· 1989 is four years before Dak Prescott was born and six years before Ezekiel Elliott was born.
· The San Francisco 49ers won Super Bowl XXIII, beating the Cincinnati Bengals 20–16.
· Nintendo’s Game Boy was released.
· In the World Series, the Oakland Athletics swept the San Francisco Giants in a series that was delayed because of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
· On August 24, 1989, following an investigation that he gambled on baseball, superstar player Pete Rose was banned from baseball for life.
· The movie ‘Batman’, starring Michael Keaton and directed by Tim Burton, became the first film to earn $100 million in its first 10 days of release.
· NASA’s highly anticipated Galileo blasted off into outer space. The unmanned spacecraft was sent to study the planet Jupiter and its moons.
· The ‘World Wide Web’ is born. Software engineer Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea in Geneva, Switzerland. The interconnected web was a tool for scientists around the world to share information.
The world has changed during Jones' tenure in the NFL. And the NFL has changed as well, largely for the bigger and the better.
