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Commentary: Jerry Jones’ crass behavior alienates common fan


Jerry Jones might not be a few cans short of a six-pack, but if drunk words are sober thoughts, he’s a few self-celebratory pom-pom’s past pompous — past Terrell Owens, even.

Pardon the dumpster dive, but it’s time to investigate the stink coming from the seemingly-anxious secessionist state.

This is not just the standard rant against the rich guy shooting the foot in his mouth. There are underlying implications left in the wake of his super-seismic ego.

Deadspin.com readers know what I’m talking about.

Jones was caught chatting at a bar with some fellow patrons, seemingly sloshed out of his leathery gourd.

Here’s a brief summary, according to the transcript on the Web site.

Jones was asked, hypothetically (giggle at the idea of him trying to pronounce that word at that moment), if he was the Jaguars’ owner and could draft Tim Tebow to sell jerseys, would he?

Jones answered, “That’s the only reason I brought in Bill Parcells.”

He follows that gem with what sounds like “sell mammoth ******* rake.” As if to say hiring Parcells, much like drafting Tebow, was merely a marketing ploy to boost his bottom line.

He uses the noun form of rake, unlike “raking in money.” Perhaps that’s highfalutin oil company jargon. “Selling mammoth rake” also does have a particular ring to it when slurred with a Texas twang.

He then says “Bill is not worth a ****. I love him. He’s not worth a ****, but I wanted — they were on my ass so bad. J’s gotta have a ‘yes man.’ So to get this ***** stadium, I need to bring his ass in.”

Wow.

So, there are two things there. First, the Parcells hiring was not just to keep his team in the headlines and to pump up a fan base notorious for its surface-level loyalty, but so to ensure company conformity for the project once coined the “Death Star.”

J?

It really is America’s Team, isn’t it?

At a time when ominously cryptic concepts like complex derivatives are flaunted over the heads of middle-Americans who feel they’ve bailed out the bankers to rob them of their futures, the last thing they want is their sports world to be sullied by the upchuck insights of a megalomaniac like Jones.

This is the owner of a franchise that some believe has a logo (a star) worth more than the Evil Empire itself (the Yankees), an owner whose net worth skyrocketed through a recession and is one of the richest men in the world.

However, he’s a man who decries the NFL’s revenue sharing system as subsidization, yet received huge amounts of funding for his stadium through local taxes and the NFL.

While the extravagance of Cowboys Stadium was much ballyhooed for the casual television spectator, little talked about was arguably its primary mission — to serve as a haven for the most affluent “fans,” with the sale of season ticket “licenses” up to $150,000 at the club level, and its high-tech in-game catering service.

Jones separates the blue-collar fan from the NFL experience by pacifying them with the world’s largest high-definition television, pleasing the masses by handing out standing room only tickets, substituting community-binding passion for wine-sipping hedonists and creating a caste system in the one last sanctuary — sports — where all folks should be equal in their fanhood.

Sports indeed mirrors our reality, where the most obsessively greedy exploit the system itself, biting the hand that feeds them through the media, creating an Orwellian illusion not only that they aren’t a beneficiary of the system, but the system itself is limiting to the competition they are attempting to monopolize.

They are driving their propaganda deep enough to turn people against their own best interests under the delusional guise of a chance at the American dream (extinct).

Jones will surely try to muck up the new collective bargaining agreement — those damn unions. Let’s hope this incident doesn’t scare him from the saloon.

Keep your camera phones at hand.

Reach Nick at nick.ruland@asu.edu


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