Jerry Jones is a man of many titles. Oil tycoon; owner; sometimes fight-promoter; guest star of Entourage; Mr. Burns minus the nuclear power plant. But none of these titles will draw the ire of Dallasites as does “general manager.” Jerry the GM, as opposed to Jerry the owner, who is generally and rightfully liked, is viewed as a menace, a pox on the Dallas Cowboys to be viewed with malice and bitterness.
The idea behind the enmity is not only that Jones is not an adroit evaluator of talent, but that merely by being the team’s general manager, that he isn’t willing to hire a strong head coach for fear of losing power, but that his presence as general manager will potentially scare away any such coaches. To at least one of these points, Jimmy Johnson, a man who speaks from experience, disagrees.
In an appearance today on ESPN Radio’s “The Herd,” with Colin Cowherd, Johnson was asked by the host whether Jerry the GM was a detriment to the attractiveness of the Cowboys’ head coaching position.
“I really don’t think so,” Johnson said. “I think there’s a misconception there. Everybody talks about how Jerry meddled with me, but he really didn’t. For one thing, it was in my contract that I had complete control over all personnel operations, personnel as players, coaches, strength coaches, et cetera. Now, that did cause a little bit of a conflict and there toward the end he didn’t like that, so, from that time forward, he changed it to where the coaches didn’t have that in their contract.
“But I don’t think it’s a negative at all. The head coach is going to be a strong personality and he’s going to be able to get done what he wants to.”
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