Of the NFL’s 32 team principals, only Jerry Jones mugs for TV cameras during games, entertains reporters afterward, and has a stadium that’s a monument to his stature in the game. Even the most casual football watcher would recognize the 80-year-old oilman as the face of the Dallas Cowboys – America’s Team – the cultural institution Jones won three championships with in the 1990s.
Where late Raiders owner Al Davis exerted his authority over the league through the court system, Jones came to power through good ol’ fashioned hucksterism, overstating everything from his roster’s Super Bowl prospects to his own indispensability as Cowboys general manager. And while Jones’s ingratiating southern boy routine has no doubt had a heavy hand in lifting the league’s fortunes and making the Cowboys the world’s most valuable sports firm (with a reported worth of $8bn), it has yet to explain why the face of America’s Team can’t own his singular role in one of the more ignominious moments in this country’s past.
