Few relationships in all of sports are as icy as the one between Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and his former two-time Super Bowl winner Jimmy Johnson.
In a recent FOX interview promoting his new book, Johnson admitted that “things changed” when the Cowboys started winning a lot more in the early-1990s after going 1-15 in 1989. Johnson dismissed the idea that Jones was “meddling” in his team as so many have suggested, but rather that Jones simply wanted to be “more in the spotlight.”
“You see, when Jerry was buying the Cowboys, I can remember like it was yesterday. We were in his automobile and he said, ‘Jimmy, you’re in charge of the football, I’m in charge of the money and we’ll make sports history.’ Well, we made sports history. And everything worked fine for a long time and then all of a sudden we started winning and then when we started winning, things changed a little bit. There started to be a little bit of a tension,” Johnson said.
“People say, ‘he meddled too much.’ No he didn’t meddle. It’s just that when we started winning, he wanted to be more in the spotlight. I was proud of what we accomplished. Maybe I didn’t want to share it. I take fault in a lot of it. I should’ve shared it more.”
That desire for the spotlight led Jerry Jones to dismiss Jimmy Johnson shortly after winning Super Bowl XXVIII. They’ve largely been on non-speaking terms in the near-30 years since.
A few years back, Jones pledged to have Johnson inducted into the Cowboys’ prestigious Ring of Honor, but that hasn’t materialized yet – and at this point, who knows if it ever will?
It’s hard to know who’s in the wrong and right here with so little information available to work on.
It would ultimately be a shame if the two Hall of Famers couldn’t set aside their differences while they still can.