FRISCO, Texas _ For Jerry Jones, the road to the gates of the Pro Football Hall of Fame began in a fetal position. That's hardly a comfortable pose for a successful 46-year-old businessman who already had amassed more than a modicum of wealth and power through the relatively obscure oil fields of rural America.
Jones, who was based in Arkansas and Oklahoma, didn't have to ponder purchasing the Dallas Cowboys back in 1989 for more than a New York minute. He was determined to add the Cowboys to his portfolio despite the advice of a team of attorneys and accountants who looked at the blue- and metallic silver-shaded glamour and glitz surrounding America's Team and saw only a black hole.
Jones clearly understood the cold, hard fact that the team, owned by Bum Bright and a cadre of minority owners, was drowning in the red. It was bleeding $1 million a month with full-blown bankruptcy beckoning.
His bean counters, immersed in due diligence, had informed Jones that the FDIC already had foreclosed on 13 percent of the franchise with another 40 percent headed to the courthouse.
No matter. Jones couldn't stand having his nose pressed to the window while what he craved sat in plain view on the other side.
Jones wanted what he wanted and let the bottom line be damned. He could fix it, he believed, when he got his hands on the Cowboys.
"I was blindly intoxicated with the idea of being involved with sports and the NFL," Jones said earlier in January, one month shy of 28 years since he purchased the Cowboys.
But deep down, buying the franchise scared him. And it scarred him.
Jittery Jerry Jones? Who knew?
Certainly not if you remember his coming out party, his introduction as the Cowboys owner on a haunting Saturday night in late February 1989. It was there, at the Cowboys' Valley Ranch headquarters, that Jones announced he had fired iconic coach Tom Landry earlier in the day. He confirmed he was bringing along his former University of Arkansas football teammate Jimmy Johnson, a college coach with no NFL experience, to replace Landry.
And then, there was this nugget. Jones decreed that he would be in charge of every detail related to the franchise, down to "jocks" and "socks."
He came across as J.R. Ewing cocky.
"I put on a brave face," Jones admitted in recalling the night while seated in his sleek office on the second floor of the Cowboys' new billion-dollar headquarters complex. Appropriately called "The Star," it bookends his team's billion-dollar stadium 36 miles to the south.
Turns out the "brave face" was the ultimate con.
Jones said if anyone had seen him trying to hold a cup of water in the stressed-filled days and sleepless nights in the hours leading up to the moment, they would have known.
"I was so nervous I needed two hands not to spill," he said.
And those nerves didn't disappear anytime soon.
For years, Jones said, he could not talk about the events surrounding his purchase of the Cowboys for $140 million, a then-record price on the American sports landscape, without inexplicably breaking into a cold sweat while fighting back tears.
It bothered him enough that he solicited medical advice.
"I've talked to doctors about it," Jones said. "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 have come."
