ForbesLife Magazine is doing a series called “When I Was 25,” where they have a bunch of rich business types write a short, 1,000-word-or-so essay on what life/business was like when they were 25-years-old. This is relevant to our blog, because in a forthcoming issue, the subject of the stroll down Memory Lane is none other than our old pal Jerry Jones.
Turns out, when Jerry Jones was 25, he was looking to purchase a professional football team--namely, the San Diego Chargers. As the story goes, Jones’ father talked him out of the move.
"He asked me what in the world I was doing," Jones writes, via the Dallas Morning News. "He told me I was supposed to be working in the insurance business and that I still had the pizza-parlor deal to work out. He told me to let football go, that by my own admission the Chargers wouldn't work financially. He told me, 'I hate to see you start life behind the eight ball.'"
Jones listened to his father and didn’t buy the team, only to regret the move shortly thereafter.
"Now, of course, just a few months later, the AFL and the NFL merged. The value of the Chargers skyrocketed," Jones wrote. "What I could have had for $5.8 million was then sold for over $11 million.
"My dad told that story for the rest of his life, how he had talked me out of earning millions at age 25."
All’s well that ends well, though, and Jones would get his football team. He’d just have to wait until 1989, when he was 46.
You can read the full essay here.
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