On Monday we had some fun with a vague report about Jerry Jones going under the knife for an operation deemed serious and not life threatening. The desire to keep details about the operation secret led us to believe that Double J was up to his old tricks and doing some pruning on his face to keep the ravages of age from spoiling his gorgeous smile.
Alas, we were wrong. Dorian Gray had nothing to do with this surgery, although it would certainly help explain why everything was so hush-hush if vanity had been driving that train.
Jones actually had surgery to repair his rotator cuff. While you might imagine that the injury came from years of writing big checks for players who wound up causing Jones to slam his fist down on a table in anger, that doesn't seem to be the case. Jones claims that the initial injury happened when he was playing football as a high schooler and he simply never got it fixed until last month.
"It's coming along, medically, and certainly it's in good shape," Jones told the Associated Press. "I kid a lot of the players and staff sometimes about their surgeries and ask them when they think they're going to get out there full deal in a kidding way, now I don't have the gall to come out here and look like I'm half-injured. ... It's a little hard when you are around football practice and see all the physical work that goes on, it's pretty hard to complain and slow down over a hangnail."
It all seems to be on the up and up but it wouldn't be Double J if there weren't still parts of this story that make you shake your head in mild disbelief.
First is the choice to keep things so secretive when you chose to have the surgery at such a visible time in the year. Had Jones gone under the knife in March, say, he would have had plenty of time to stay out of the public eye and let it heal without anyone being the wiser. That leads to the question of why an owner having shoulder surgery is cause for so much secrecy. It's not like we're talking about Tony Romo's shoulder here, but, again, there would seem to be an easier way to avoid scrutiny if that's what you desired.
Finally, there's the question of why he felt the need to call the operation major when initially discussing it. We're well aware of the risks involved with any kind of surgery, but when you hear words like major thrown around with medical procedures you aren't thinking about shoulder surgery. Again, it's just odd to bring it up in that way if your desire is to keep details under wraps.
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All of this has absolutely nothing to do with the Cowboys season, of course. Double J is just a fascinating character and worth a digression every now and again. We'll now return the discussion to football, at least until the owner's next bunion removal.
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