Jones began changing that as soon as he could, at first in the face of lawsuits from the league and howls of protests from his fellow owners.

Over time, that’s changed.

Newer owners saw a method to Jerry’s madness.

“Jerry is a big thinker who can execute,” said Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots. “He is one of the best salesmen I’ve ever met.”

As he’s shifted from rebel to part of the institution, Jones says he’s slowed down. But that’s hard to believe. He’s constantly thinking—words sometimes fail to keep up with his mind. He’s at the same time both smooth and intense, focused and restless, constantly fiddling with his Super Bowl ring. (He has three, but wears only one at a time.)

“He is so smart, so creative, and has so much energy, he just blurs past you,” said Bill Lively, president and CEO of the North Texas Super Bowl Host Committee and a former director of the Dallas Cowboys band and halftime productions.

Before the Redskins game, Jones stopped an interview to take a call from offensive coordinator Jason Garrett. Jones told his play caller that Kevin Ogletree deserved a roster spot as the team’s fifth wide receiver, and he ought to get more repetitions in practice and in games. With that call concluded, he’s immediately back in the interview, as if it never happened.

That’s how involved Jones is in running his team. And his work has only gotten more intense. The Cowboys are a playoff-caliber team with a recent history of underachieving. Then there was that billion-dollar construction project during the last four years. The folks filling the new stadium deserve a better effort from the team, Jones says. And Jones himself deserves better.

“All you have to do is walk in here and know that I mean business,” Jones said, standing proudly in the new stadium.

Buying Low

Jones is the high-profile boss of the highest-profile team in the highest-profile sport on the continent. And, as of last year, he got a high-class football stadium to match.

That’s a long way from 1989, when he paid $160 million for the Cowboys—$150 million for the team and $10 million toward Herschel Walker’s guaranteed and unpaid contract.

The National Basketball Association was on the rise. And Texas in the late 1980s was stuck in a recession highlighted by real estate foreclosures, bank failures, and an energy bust. Cowboys owner Harvey R. “Bum” Bright, an oilman himself, had to put the team up for sale.

“In 1989, you not only had an economically depressed climate, you had a mentally depressed climate here,” Jones said. “If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to buy the Cowboys.”

As coach Tom Landry said a tearful goodbye, newspapers reported, incredulously, that the man who fired him planned to set up his own office at the Dallas Cowboys headquarters in Valley Ranch where he would be full time. Jones might even oust longtime general manager Tex Schramm and actually run the team himself. (Schramm departed shortly thereafter.)

For those closest to Jones, his behavior wasn’t puzzling at all.

Before oilman Mike McCoy was Jones’ partner in the business that made them wealthy, he recalls that Jones was a minority owner in another drilling project, but Jones still behaved like the boss.

“He was still doing it the Jerry way—he had a whole lot of minority interest,” McCoy said. (In fact, Jones sought out McCoy and convinced him to partner on an oil business so that Jones could be the boss.)

“He wouldn’t ever own something that he didn’t run,” said Charlotte Jones Anderson, Jerry’s daughter and the club’s president of charities and vice president of brand management. “He felt like he was going to go in and run this business and do the best job he could.”