It is it not a “new admission” from Jerry Jones. Indeed, he is so proud of it that it doesn’t even qualify as an “admission” when the Dallas Cowboys owner talks of how “America’s Team” stays atop the public consciousness regardless of whether the football team is actually any good. “I say this tongue-in-cheek,” the masterful salesman Jones said, “but if it gets a little slow, I know how to stir it up.”
The phenomenon is real, as recently evidenced by the TV ratings in last Sunday’s Cowboys loss at Philadelphia. More than 27 million people watched that game, the largest audience for any TV show of any kind since the Super Bowl. On, and this season’s second-highest game in ratings? That would be another Cowboys outing, in Week 2 vs. the Jets.
No, the Cowboys have not reached a Super Bowl since the 1995-96 season. And yes, Jones is aware of the criticism that suggests that as long as “America’s Team” is swimming in profits due to popularity, how important, really, is winning? Jones, speaking on 105.3 The Fan on Friday, said, “The media has had some fun with me and beat up on me. “I’ve chosen to be involved in sports, and I do understand what goes with it. Sometimes I don’t like it, but we’re all in this thing together.
“And what I what I really like about it is that it has fleeting moments of pure ecstasy. And boy, they’re rare. But, man when you get one you can live on it a long time.” Again, Cowboys critics can be stuck on that “long time” thing. And while we can testify that Jones truly does care about being both a “sportsman and a businessman,” as he has passionately put it to us many times, we are also the place that coined the following phrase … “Sometimes, the Cowboys seem like a marketing company that plays football on the side.”
And Jerry’s “stir-it-up” remark feeds that concept. “It’s 365 days,” Jones said of the NFL’s popularity. “You could argue there’s a soap opera going on, on and off the field during the season, out of the season. There’s controversy, there’s all kinds of happenings with the players, their relationships.”
That is true. But so it this: The best way for Jerry Jones’ Dallas Cowboys to be “relevant” and “popular” in ways that are almost unfathomable has nothing to do with “marketing” and “soap operas.” Put Jerry’s Cowboys back in the Super Bowl and the rest will take care of itself.
