“Bill’s not worth a shit, I love him….not worth a shit, but I
wanted…they were on my ass so bad. They said J’s gotta have a ‘Yes Man,’
so to get this fucking stadium, I need to bring his ass in.”
— Jerry Jones, Owner, Dallas Cowboys
I’m about to vent a little bit and be part of the problem I’m venting about
at the same time, not an easy double dip to pull off. At the very least,
it’s a hypocritical one. First, allow me to be part of the problem…
Hey, have y’all seen that video with a slurring, shitfaced Jerry Jones
sharing his innermost thoughts on Bill Parcells and Tim Tebow yet? No?
Well, ask and ye shall receive….
For those who can’t access the video, here is the transcript of Jones’
conversation with a few bar patrons at a Dallas restaurant:
Jerry Jones: Romo was a miracle.
Other guy: It was a miracle, wasn’t it?
Jerry Jones: He almost never got in, and he almost was gone.
Tebow would
never…
Different other guy: What if you were the Jaguars or — would you
just, just
draft him and sell fucking jerseys?
Jerry Jones: That’s the only reason I brought in Bill Parcells.
[Laughter] [Inaudible. Sounds a little like, “Sell mammoth fuckin’
rake,”
whatever that means.] Bill’s not worth a shit. I love him.
Different other guy: I know you do.
Jerry Jones: Not worth a shit, but I wanted — they were on my
ass so bad.
J’s gotta have a yes man. So to get this fuckin’ stadium, I need to
bring
his ass in.
Different other guy: What, you, you wouldn’t take Tebow in the
third round?
Jerry Jones: Why? He’d never get on the field. I can’t get him
out there.
[Laughter] I can’t get him out there.
Okay, so now because of this blog, presumably a few more people have
seen this
video as the revelation that an NFL owner drinks (gasp!) and loves to be
the
center of attention spreads in a viral fashion across the internet.
Because
that’s how it happens — some bored jokester clandestinely holds his
video
cell phone at waist level and shoots 48 seconds of footage of an NFL
owner
bullshitting about football. He then tries to sell the video, fails,
forwards it to Deadspin who then puts it on the fast track to snarky
radio
hosts and bloggers worldwide (yeah, I know…I’m both of those
things….).
We all get a big laugh out of it, then proceed to crack our jokes.
The problem is this — because Jones feels a trust was violated (and it
was
— the “sanctity of the bar” as John Granato calls it), those of us who
enjoy candid conversation with interesting people just lost one more
interesting person. Say what you will about Jones, but he’s not boring;
I’m
not sure how you could have your name informally on the monstrosity the Cowboys now
play in and be anything but brash, cocky, and unique. He’s all of those
things.
You would find very few people in sports, let alone owners of teams, who
would have a legitimate “guys night out” kind of football conversation
at a
bar, but Jones is clearly one of them. His comments about Tebow “never
[getting] on the field” are the basis for arguments that occur daily in
my
office with John Harris and Lance Zierlein and in sports bars all over
the
country.
There’s no other way to say it — it’s pretty fucking cool that Jerry
Jones
enjoys football fans the way he does in this video (so after this, maybe
“did” is a better term to use). More than anything else, I like that we
got
some honest thoughts and he didn’t hold back. That’s the Catch 22.
These
are things he’d never say on television, but it took violating his trust
—
and violating the “sanctity of the bar” — to have all of us get to hear
them.
Go ahead and assume that “out in public Jerry”/”having a few at the bar
Jerry” just became a whole lot less interesting. The next time he has a
handful of football fans gathered around him, we’ll get a whole lot of
owner-speak, if he decides to talk to people at all. Much the same way
Anderson
Silva killed the UFC going back to Abu Dhabi with his antics, the owner
of
this cell phone killed lively, drunken candor with Jerry Jones.
Probably the second lamest part of this whole thing (filming Jerry
without
his consent being the first) is the fact that now Jerry Jones feels
compelled to “set the record straight”, saying that
his
assessment of Parcells as not being “worth a shit” is a sarcastic term
of
endearment, not a criticism.
All I know is that if Jerry Jones uses “not worth a shit” as a term of
endearment, I will do whatever it takes to get on his Christmas card
list —
“As the angel proclaimed good tidings of great joy,
may your family find peace in this holiest of seasons.
None of y’all are worth a shit.
God Bless,
The Jones Family”
Speaking of “God Bless,” I guess we can cross Tim Tebow off of the
Cowboys
draft board, huh? I mean, why draft Tebow in the third round when
you’ve
got a perfectly good Stephen McGee waiting in the wings, right?
It’s too bad that cell phone video wasn’t the rage in 2001, we could
have
seen Jones slurring his effusive praise of Quincy Carter to a few frat
boys
at Lawry’s Steakhouse a week before taking him 100 picks before anyone
else
was going to. But alas, if that happened back then Jones would have
started
to check himself and the “Parcells/Tebow” video never would have
happened,
thus leaving the world without its new term of endearment — “not worth a
shit.”
See, I just can’t help myself. It’s completely lame that these guys
ambushed Jones, and yet I have to get my snark on. Dammit, 2010 is so
complex. Oh well, if this is the last iteration of “out in public
Jerry”/”having a few at the bar Jerry” that we get, then he went out in a
blaze of glory befitting a man with his name more or less on a billion-dollar
stadium.
Congrats, Jerry! You’re not worth a shit!!
Listen to Sean Pendergast on 1560 The Game from 3-7 p.m. weekdays on the Sean & John Show, and follow him on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/SeanCablinasian.
This article appears in Apr 15-21, 2010.
