- [Narrator] During the 1990s, the combination
of Jimmy Johnson's coaching and Jerry Jones' ownership
resuscitated and redefined the biggest brand in football.
Under the leadership of the J's,
the Dallas Cowboys became more than champions,
they were America's Team,
a brand so popular, it became even bigger than Texas.
So in 1994, when veteran coach Barry Switzer
found himself interviewing for a suddenly vacant
Cowboys head coaching job
smack in the middle of what could have been
a dynasty run for Johnson and Jones,
Switzer, who coached both men
as players at the University of Arkansas,
found himself asking the question on everyone's mind.
"I wanna figure out how you guys both fucked this up."
(gentle upbeat music)
Decades before they reinvented
football's most famous star,
Jones and Johnson met as linemen
for the Razorbacks in the 1960s.
Jones, a middle class kid from Little Rock,
played offensive line, and Johnson,
who grew up poor in the Texas Gulf,
was opposite him on defense.
After their college playing days
netted them a national title,
Johnson immediately made the jump to coaching.
In 1984, Johnson succeeded the legendary
Howard Schnellenberger at the University of Miami,
eventually winning a national championship
during a dominant run with the 'Canes.
Meanwhile, Jones floundered in restaurants and real estate
until he made his first million
in the world of 1970s oil wildcatters.
Over time, Jones became an energy and real estate mogul,
with a fortune big enough to purchase
a languishing Cowboys franchise in 1989
from H.R. "Bum" Bright.
His first order of business was to fire the legendary
two-time Super Bowl-winning head coach, Tom Landry.
Then Jones booted GM Tex Schramm
and put himself in the role.
Jones and Johnson were never close friends,
but had stayed in touch over the years.
Jones even helped put in a good word to get Johnson
his first head coaching job at Oklahoma State.
But just as Jones bought a Dallas franchise
bleeding money off the field and losing on it,
Johnson was red hot, riding a 52 and nine run
with the Hurricanes.
Johnson loved Miami, but the allure of the NFL
and rebuilding the legendary Cowboys brand was too much.
To get Johnson to leave one dynasty
in hopes of building another,
Jones convinced his old teammate with one simple agreement.
Johnson would have complete control over the football
and Jones all the business.
This seemingly simple arrangement
would be the root cause of all the strife to come.
To this day, Johnson says he was the sole decision maker
in free agency, trades, and drafts,
while Jones, the self-appointed General Manager,
claims he helped architect the roster
of what would become America's Team.
The city of Dallas' reputation in the 1980s
was as a glitzy boom town,
a culture constructed to coddle the kind of millionaires
who couldn't truly feel rich
unless they were showing it.
Jones and Johnson were both overqualified to fix the Cowboys
and success seemed inevitable,
but as archetypes of both their respective industries
and the era, they were doomed.
Johnson and/or Jones stripped the Cowboys down
and rebuilt through a painful one and 15 season in 1989.
After finishing seven and nine in 1990,
proof of concept was evident,
as was Jones' growing awareness
that Johnson's football success,
although minor to that point,
drew way more attention than any of the sweeping moves
Jones had made to turn the franchise profitable again.
"I can make $5 million and no one gives a shit.
"I want to have some of that fun."
Both parties claimed a happy, symbiotic relationship
during the two-year rebuilding phase,
but then Jones started holding
his own weekly press conferences during the season
and even served steak to reporters just to boost attendance.
As for Johnson, already a proven winner
and on the cusp of breaking through as a pro coach,
he wasn't interested in sharing credit
for his good work with an increasingly public-facing owner.
"I had a big ego as well.
"Why shouldn't the story be told as it actually happened?"
In Johnson and Jones' third season together,
the Cowboys broke through, finishing 11 and five.
Johnson claims in his autobiography
that after the Cowboys started winning,
Jones offered to rework his head coaching contract
three different times if Jones could take
some form of roster control back in writing,
"I refused each time.
"That wasn't negotiable."
In 2014, Johnson told ESPN that Jones was against
the famous 1989 Herschel Walker trade
that kickstarted the Cowboys' eventual resurgence,
when Minnesota sent Dallas four players
and eight draft picks for the running back.
Jones had literal ownership, but was starved for credit.
For the 1992 draft, Jones allowed television cameras
to broadcast the Cowboys' war room live, but without audio,
a move Johnson begrudgingly agreed to
before realizing Jones was creating
his own personal reality show.
Johnson was now working out a draft day trade
with the Cleveland Browns on live TV,
so according to a Sports Illustrated story,
Jones allegedly told his coach,
"Whenever you're about to make a pick,
"you look at me like we're talking about it."
In the 1992 and '93 seasons,
the Cowboys would win back-to-back Super Bowls
over the Buffalo Bills,
ensconcing both men as NFL legends
and cementing the Cowboys as both a nationally popular brand
and a burgeoning dynasty.
But behind the scenes,
Johnson and Jones were barely speaking,
often battling over petty grievances and a long-term war
over who was most responsible for the wild success at hand.
In his book, Johnson claims that winning on the field
only made his life inside the franchise worse.
"My deteriorating relationship with Jerry
"was compounded by the draining role I played
"in driving the team to a second Super Bowl title."
In December of '93, during the run to another championship,
a frustrated Johnson told reporters
that the idea of coaching the brand new
Jacksonville Jaguars franchise was intriguing,
a comment years later he admitted
was just public posturing to irk Jones.
It worked and behind the scenes,
his owner was enraged at the idea
of Johnson leaving to coach an expansion team.
To this point, the pair's battle for credit
was at best a media sideshow
eclipsed by the on-field success of two titles
and a core of Pro Bowlers intact.
All that changed in March of 1994.
According to multiple reports and Johnson himself,
the undoing began at the league meetings in Orlando.
An allegedly inebriated Jones wandered over to a table
where Johnson and various former Cowboys
assistant coaches and their wives were eating dinner
and proposed a toast to Dallas's championships.
When Johnson's table, some of whom had been fired by Jones,
returned the proposal with blank faces and dirty looks,
Jones stormed off swearing.
Later that night, Jones would tell
two "Dallas Morning News" reporters, quote,
"There are 500 coaches who could have won the Super Bowl
with our team."
That comment, along with what Johnson believed
was consistent leaks from Jones
to the Fort Worth Star Telegram
to smear Johnson's commitment to the franchise,
was a bridge too far.
In March of 1994, Johnson and Jones
publicly announced Johnson's departure from the franchise,
including a $2 million contract buyout.
Johnson was leaving the dynasty at its peak
and the football world in shock.
Predictably, neither party retreated from the spotlight.
After the breakup, Jones became the most visible owner
in the NFL and maybe all of professional sports.
The Cowboys hired Switzer, another Razorback buddy
who Johnson felt embodied Jones' 500 comment.
The former national title winner at Oklahoma
had been retired for five years,
but Jimmy and Jerry's mutual friends
still managed to pilot their roster
to another Super Bowl win in 1995.
As of 2023, Jones is still the Cowboys'
owner and general manager.
After a mediocre stint with the Miami Dolphins,
Johnson retired and became
a weekly television fixture with Fox.
Just as the America's Team run of the '90s
faded into history, the pair began a fresh war of words.
Stories about how and why those Cowboys of old
became both popular and apocryphal,
and the two could debate authorship all over again.
In 2014, ESPN published a huge profile on Jones,
who finally summed up his disdain for Johnson
as an issue of loyalty.
"Disloyalty, I had paid so many times a higher price
"to get to be there than he had paid.
"It was unbelievable."
When reached for comment in return,
Johnson said that Jones came off, quote,
"like a rich asshole" in the story.
But if time heals all wounds, in Dallas, Texas,
a good marketing campaign is a faster salve.
In 2017, the long estranged Jones and Johnson
were physically reunited at a United Way event
to celebrate the 25th anniversary
of the Cowboys' 1992 championship.
That night, Jones seemed to amend his famous 500 quote
with a mea culpa about his former head coach.
"There's no question the contribution
"that he made to the success.
"Johnson was worth five number one picks
"to be the Cowboys coach."
Weirdly, at the same event,
Cowboys legend Emmitt Smith blamed the media
for overplaying their beef.
"Jimmy's been supportive of Jerry,
"just like Jerry's been supportive of Jimmy."
Ironically, the pair made it a point
to compliment each other to the local media,
the exact arena where they'd sparred decades back.
Jerry was especially honest.
"Jimmy and I really understand the circumstances.
"I've always had to overlook his foils,
"but he's had to overlook mine too."
Decades after that meeting with Switzer in '94,
Jones told the story to the media
and when asked if he could answer Switzer's question today,
he admitted he couldn't.
"I've never been able to know why I fucked it up."
By January of 2020, this beef seemed all but cooked.
Johnson was inducted into the Hall of Fame,
celebrated by Jones with a big
congratulatory media statement.
The exact kind of display the owner
used to infuriate his coach with
was now a gesture of honest appreciation.
The following summer, Jones had even teared up
while admitting he meddled too much
with his one in 500 Super Bowl winner.
"Jimmy's a great coach.
"It was my job to keep it together.
"Should have had deference to something
"that was working good."
But egos like these keep growing
right alongside with their age.
In 2021, Jones announced that Johnson
would be inducted into the Cowboys Ring of Honor,
joining his former players Smith,
Troy Aikman, and Michael Irvin.
At the time of the announcement,
Johnson picked at his sensitive old boss,
asking if he'd be inducted, quote, "while I'm alive?"
With Jones seemingly at his most humble state in decades,
at least publicly, Johnson piled on,
telling the media, "Jerry doesn't ever want to admit
"he's wrong."
Over a year after the announcement
of Johnson's induction to the Ring of Honor,
no date had been set.
When pressed by local media about the event in 2022,
Jones reverted back to his confrontational state.
"I get to make that decision.
"It isn't, at the end of the day,
"all tailored around whether Jimmy is sniveling or not."
Johnson, of course, used that comment
to make a fresh round through the media,
saying he'd, quote, "never sniveled in his life."
For years, both men refused to publicly acknowledge
each other's role in a success that's become legend,
a success that looks big enough to share,
at least from outside of Dallas, Texas.
And then, after eventually relenting and doing just that,
for no good reason,
Johnson and Jones just couldn't let it be.
In the Jerry and Me chapter of his 2022 autobiography,
Johnson claimed that no one understands
his relationship with Jones because, quote,
"I don't even understand my relationship with Jerry."
He also retold his version
of the Hall of Fame induction in '21,
inadvertently capturing both
the emotional depth of their respect for one another,
but also their fragility of ego.
"I know how much you contributed to my success,"
Jerry told me.
"I love you."
"I love you, too," I said,
"but at times, I hate you."
"At times, I hate you, too."
(bright music tone)
All right, guys, thanks for watching this Texas-sized Beef.
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(gentle upbeat music)