Jerry Jones Does Dallas

Did you hear that Jerry Jones is trying to buy the Southland Corporation? He's going to change the name of 7-Eleven to 0-11.

--Dallas Joke

It has been maybe two minutes since the Washington Redskins finished creaming the Dallas Cowboys, and in the losers' locker room, owner Jerry Jones has gone straight to the lavatory to spit. While Jerry's leaning over the sink, coach Jimmy Johnson is standing alone in the center of the room, standing flat-footed, with his arms limp by his sides. He looks stunned, like a prize fighter who has gotten to his feet just after the bell.

No players have reached the lockers yet, just Jerry and Jimmy. These two go back a long way together, back far enough not to have to talk in moments like this. In the early Sixties, they were college roommates and teammates at Arkansas under legendary coach Frank Broyles; and in 1964, they were co-captains of the Razorbacks team that went 11-0 and beat Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl for the national title. They were winners then, and they've both been winners since. Jerry made a fortune in the oil-and-gas business, and Jimmy made himself a hot property by improving the fortunes of every team he coached. When Jerry bought the Cowboys in February 1989, he promised his new home town a winner. His first act in that regard was to fire Tom Landry, Dallas' coach for29 years, and declare Jimmy his main man.

So the feeling these two old pals are sharing on this otherwise beautiful day in Dallas is one they haven't experienced often, though they're getting a lot more familiar with it than they'd like. After going 3--1 in the pre-season, the Cowboys are 0-3 now that it counts. To make matters worse, today was homecoming--the first regular-season home game. Good thing Jerry and Jimmy are both diehard positive thinkers, because in the minds of most Dallas fans, the Jerry-Jimmy act is wearing thin. First, there's suddenly all this tacky hoopla, this hoo-hawing and showboating that Jerry does in the name of promotion--such as having Elizabeth Taylor perform today's coin toss. Then there's Jimmy fresh up from the college ranks, with his moon face and his shellacked helmet hair, pacing the very same side lines that Landry did. Finally, there's the Arkansas thing. Texans loathe Arkansans, considering them bumpkins even beyond the imagination of an Al Capp. Arkansans point to Texans' penchant for gaudy cowboy boots and say, "Consider the source." This animosity started, as near as anyone can remember, over football: The Arkansas Razor-backs are the only non-Texas team in the Southwest Conference. Over the years, Texas fans have come to abhor the sight of one of their stadiums half-filled with screaming people wearing red hats in the shape of wild pigs.

So when two hog-hat wearers march across the state line and take control of one of Texas' most cherished traditions, it's no wonder the Dallas fans squeal. And the words they're squealing now, loud and clear, are, This is the big leagues, hot-shots. You're not in Arkansas anymore, Toto

And indeed they're not. They're deep in the bowels of Texas Stadium, which Jerry now owns, and they're trying to exorcise this demon that has been eating their lunch week after week. Jerry's spitting, as if you could hock up a hunk of defeat and get it out of (continued on page 138)Jerry Jones(continued from page 126) your system. And Jimmy, he's stillstanding there teetering.

•

The photograph sitting on a credenza behind Jerry Jones's desk in Dallas shows a smiling Jerry standing next to a man who's wearing a cowboy hat and a rugged grin, the kind Western movie stars used to affect. This is the most prominent photograph in Jerry's office.

Jerry doesn't remember who the man in the photograph is.

That's as succinct a symbol as you'll find for how weird his life has gotten over the past seven months, months filled with faces in the crowd--so many of them, in fact, that they've become a blur. Until he bought the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry was a quietly successful oil-and-gas entrepreneur from Little Rock." Since then, he has visited the White House to meet George Bush. He has bantered with Sam Donaldson on national TV He has played host to Liz Taylor in his sky box. He has opened his home to Robin Leach for a segment of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

But the really strange thing is, he seems to love the spotlight so! This is what baffles the people who knew the old Jerry Jones as a close-to-the-vest guy with a passion for privacy. In the old days, his name rarely appeared in the newspaper. Those in the know in Little Rock knew him, but that was as cognoscenti everywhere know those in their midst with money.

Which is why the people in Little Rock were as surprised as everybody else when they woke up one morning and saw Jerry's face staring back at them from their morning paper, along with a story reporting that he paid $140,000,000 for the privilege of owning the Dallas Cowboys football team. But the folks who thought they knew Jerry Jones were most surprised when they caught his radical new act--his banging the podium when he talked; his bluster about wanting to keep track of "jocks and socks"; his frequent thanks to "the big coach in the sky." In Little Rock's restaurants and bars, the phrase mid-life crisis was uttered.

Now, out at the Cowboys' campuslike headquarters at Valley Ranch--a complex Jerry calls "the Pentagon of sport-dom" --the new owner and general manager is just back at his office from an eight-A.M. radio call-in show, and he's tingling with energy. It is the Friday before the Redskins game and all things are still possible.

"The deejay vowed celibacy until the Cowboys win," he tells Marylyn, one of his two secretaries. "I told him that was a lot of pressure, but we'll do what we can." He recaps the show in detail as Marylyn brings him a cup of decaf.

When Jerry talks, his hands move. At the age of 47, he still wears the Arkansas Razorbacks national-championship ring that he was awarded after the Cotton Bowl in 1965. He favors the flash of cuff links, and he writes with a Mont Blanc roller ball. His hands may reposition his pocket handkerchief or flatten his tie, and, later, when he's out on the practice field in front of a film crew, they will frequently pat his sandy hair in a valiant duel with the September wind. These are the hands of a vain man, and probably a self-conscious one. How can he tolerate others' thinking he's a screwball unless he's following a higher calling?

A college friend of his named Jim Grizzle recalls that Jerry's dad, J. W. "Pat" Jones, was the first man he ever saw wearing a pinkie ring.

"Pat was his daddy, Pat was his buddy, Pat was his everything," says Grizzle.

When Jerry was growing up, Pat was in the grocery business. After World War Two, he and his wife, Arminta, moved back to Little Rock from Los Angeles (where Jerry was born) so Pat could open a fruit stand. He soon parlayed that into his first supermarket, and then a second and a third. He then started some drive-in markets, called Pat's Kwik Chek Superettes, an early competitor of 7-Eleven. This runaway success didn't happen by accident. "That guy can talk and never breathe," says Grizzle.

Young Jerry worked in his dad's store bagging groceries and delivering circulars door to door, and to this day, he claims the grocery business is a part of who he is. His father even sent Jerry, as a child of 12 or 13, to motivational seminars for store employees. "I learned to always be positive," says Jerry, twisting his championship ring. "And I learned that being positive isn't something that just happens. It's something you decide."

After 15 years in the grocery game, Pat discovered insurance and started Modern Security Life Insurance Company. By the time Jerry arrived at college on a football scholarship, he was working for the company, toting a briefcase in the summers while his cohorts were working construction or as lifeguards.

They missed the lesson Pat Jones taught his son: If you're a real salesman, you don't wait for money to come to you.A lady takes her three children to the Cowboys game and they get lost. Later, someone from the stadium calls her and says, "Ma'am, could you come get your kids? They're beating the Cowboys 14--3."

--Dallas Joke

His salesman's blood is boiling on this pregame Friday as Jerry performs for a film crew from Los Angeles. The crew asks for a tour of Valley Ranch, and the boss is happy to oblige. He proves to be a charming master of the photo opportunity, leading his happy herd through what seems like miles of corridors of glass and wood. It would be a great place to work if you were winning games.

At one point, Jerry spies a wholesome-looking family browsing in the gift shop next to the advance-ticket counter. With camera rolling, he kneels down and interviews a little boy of about four, asking what his name is and where he's from. The boy's dad volunteers that they're from Connecticut and that they've come all the way to Dallas to see the Cowboys whip the Redskins. With that, Jerry goes back behind the counter, finds a small Cowboys sweat shirt and cap and takes it out to the beaming boy. While Jerry helps the new fan put on the hat for the camera, the boy's mother whispers to her husband, "Who is he?" The husband whispers, "The owner"; but by then, Jerry is off, like the Lone Ranger, to find another situation in need of photography.

Later, after saying goodbye to the film crew, Jerry stops by for a word with the coach. Jimmy says he really believes everybody's up for the Redskins, though it bothers him that some of the vets seem to take the two previous losses a little too philosophically.

Jerry pats Jimmy on the back and heads off toward his corner of the complex, but as he passes the coaches' kitchen, he runs into assistant coach Dick Nolan making coffee. Pretty soon, he has an audience--assistant coaches Dave Wannstedt and Dave Campo have gathered round--and Jerry tells them he just had a talk with commissioner Rozelle: "I said, 'Mr. Commissioner, I'm new at this and I don't want to do anything wrong, but I was wondering, does anybody ever mess around with the sacred rite of the coin toss?' And the commissioner said, 'No. that's sacrosanct.'

"And I said, 'Well, what if I get Liz Taylor to do the toss this weekend?' And the commissioner, he says, 'Goddamn! That's a helluva deal! '" Everybody's laughing now, and Jerry laughs and waves and high-fives and wishes them all good fortune against the Redskins. With Jerry Jones, the sales job begins at home.

Such bantering with the minions is one (continued on page 146)Jerry Jones(continued from page 138) of the many changes Jerry has brought to the Cowboys. He says that Hank "Tex" Schramm, the Cowboys' former general manager, advised him not to get close to the people who worked for him, especially the players. Schramm reportedly followed that rule assiduously. "My understanding," says Jerry, "is that Tom Landry was in Tex's home one time in twenty-nine years. And Tex was never in Tom's home." A compatriot of Schramm's and Landry's protests that that's an overstatement but admits that Tex wasn't exactly a shmooser. Jerry leans backon his office sofa and shakes his head, and the look on his face is pure amazement. "One man can change a company," he says. "You get tw o people working in the same direction and you can move mountains."

He's obviously speaking of his partnership with Jimmy Johnson, which naturally leads to the subject of Tom Landry. Even now, that's a volatile topic in Dallas. "You just don't go into a town with the kinds of institutions like Tom Landry and Tex Schramm and cut their nuts off in public and stuff 'em down their throats." That eloquent summation of the problem was spoken by a Dallas professional man, and it seems to capture the mood of the city. Never mind that practically all of Dallas was ready to see Landry go; they didn't like to see an Arkansan fire him, and they didn't like the fact that the news leaked out before Jones met with Landry personally. The episode turned Landry into a martyr.

It started on February 25, 1989, when The Dallas Morning News ran a front-page picture of Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson having dinner together. The photograph was incriminating for a couple of reasons: First, they were together in Dallas; second, they were sitting smug as you please in a booth at Mia's, Tom Landry's favorite restaurant! It's as though these two interlopers had dared to walk on poor Tom's grave.

The picture forced everybody's hand, and soon Jones and Schramm were flying down to Austin to confront Landry with the news that he had been officially retired.

They met in the clubhouse of a golf course in Austin, Landry's weekend home. The room where Landry's career ended was glassed on one wall, and Landry kept his back to it. He had one of his sons with him. A crowd gathered outside and peered through the glass at Jerry while he talked. "Coach Landry said I didn't need to fly out here to say this to him, though it was 'probably good publicity,'" recalls Jerry. Over Landry's shoulder, the eyes of his friends burned tiny holes through the hit man from Arkansas.

Now, seven months after that meeting, Jerry admits he was surprised that Landry didn't receive the news of his dismissal more graciously. "He had been speaking of retirement and had been under pressure from the media," he says. "So to me, what better opportunity to make that move? I've read where he resented the fact that Jimmy was involved in. the negotiating process and he was not. Anybody knows--anybody should know--that it's not appropriate for the people who're leaving to be involved in any way with the planning for the future. The ones going forward work their strategy out, and the ones who aren't don't go on."

The afternoon sun outside his office is beginning to cast long shadows, and Jerry is on about his sixth caffeine-free Diet Coke. He is leaning forward now, watching his words carefully, but he's starting to smile. It's not a malicious smile but the smile of a man confident enough to believe in his own logic. This must be what one colleague meant when he said that Jerry Jones could say the hardest things to you with a smile on his face.

"Coach Landry, "he says, "is a man known for his belief that what's going to happen is going to happen. He's a man who has asked hundreds of men to turn in their playbooks, telling them it's over. He's a man who believes in the principle that everything can happen for the best--in other words, take this and build from it rather than lose from it. He has literally preached that.

"So for it to be less than that for him surprised me and disappointed me."

•

A guy discovers that his car has been broken into, and he thinks, Goddamn, I hope they didn't take my Cowboys' season tickets. When he checks the car, he finds that the thief has left an extra set of tickets.

--Dallas Jokes

Jerry Jones emerges from the dark innards of Texas Stadium and stops at a vantage point two sections above the end zone. It is Saturday morning, team-photo day. Down on the field, his players and coaches have already gathered for the big event.

Jerry's nostrils flare as he surveys the scene and breathes in the crisp fall air. "God, this is great!" he says. He looks like George C. Scott in Patton.

At this hour of the day, the playing field is still all in shadows, but there is a ring of sunlight on one side of the stands that comes from the hole in the roof of the stadium, an oval opening that Texans say was put there "so God can watch His favorite team play football."

If God were watching this morning, He'd soon see Jerry and Jimmy standing together on the 30-yard line, shooting the breeze about last night's pep rally. He'd see a man dressed as Santa Claus wandering among the athletes (the team will use a version of this photo as a Christmas card). He'd see Herschel Walker horsing around with a pair of sunglasses before the picture is taken. And He'd see Jerry meeting with J. R. Cavagnaro, the man who runs the stadium, for an update on preparations for tomorrow's game. As Jerry and J.R. head for the elevator that will take them up to the sky boxes, they pass right through the ring of sunlight that has edged onto the field.

Some people might consider a hole in the roof of Texas Stadium a bad omen, but that's not the way Jerry views things. He made his fortune looking for dry holes.

"I was traveling for the insurance company in Oklahoma," he says, "and everybody kept talking to me about the oil-and-gas business. I saw all this wealth, but what I didn't realize was that those people had made their money a long time ago, that they didn't reflect the current state of the oil-and-gas business." He got into it in1970, at a time when big companies were laying off their exploration departments and geologists were looking for jobs selling shoes.

Soon Jerry heard about one unfortunate ex--company man who had developed a unique geological theory about finding oil and gas. "His fundamental idea," Jerry says, "was to drill between what were dry holes that ha d defined an old river channel called the Red Fork Channel Sands. He had painstakingly looked at hundreds of wells and had mapped out where these old channel sands had gone. He'd find a productive well in what would seem to be a pool of gas, and then they'd drill another well right next to it and it'd be dry. His theory was that that well was right on the edge of a channel. So what you'd want to do was go in and find two dry holes to show the edges of the channel." Using this plan, Jerry got in the business and drilled 14 successful wells in a row. Between 1971 and 1980, he concentrated on Oklahoma, drilling some 2000 wells, of which maybe 700 were good. And when a well is good, it can be very, very good; Mike McCoy, Jerry's partner in JMC Exploration, says that a really great well can bring in $50,000,000 over a 30-year period.

But every new well is a new risk, with lots of money down on the front end and no guarantees. Sort of like buying a losing football team.

J.R. and Jerry pop into one of the sky boxes just to look around. From this corridor--which could be a hallway in a motel somewhere in North Dakota--you'd never imagine that there could be opulent rooms just on the other side of these nondescript doors. There are two levels of sky boxes in Texas Stadium; on the bottom level are the older ones, built with the stadium between 1969 and 1971. On the top level are the really fancy ones, the Crown Suites, built six years ago.

Jerry checks out this particular sky box, which isn't very opulent. But that's not his concern on this morning before the Washington game. Instead, he's debating with himself about an idea to replace the back wall of the sky box with glass, so that people could stand in the corridor and still see the ball game. And the reason he wants them to stand in the corridor is so they can drink.

The city of Irving, home of Texas Stadium, doesn't allow alcohol to be sold in the stands. In one of those flukes of the liquor laws, fans can take beer into the stands, but the stadium can't sell it to them. In Irving, only restaurants and clubs can sell alcohol, and at Texas Stadium, the sky boxes and surrounding areas are considered clubs. So now Jerry's mulling over a plan to establish lounges at various points in the corridors behind the sky boxes; his idea is that the general public could come up, enjoy a pop, then return to their seats. Standing out there in the corridor, he mimes the actions of his targeted customer, who pays his money, sips his drink and still stays in touch with the game through TVs mounted from the ceiling. Jerry smiles the smile of the satisfied Dallas fan--not to mention the satisfied owner.

Next stop is Jerry's own sky box, a room his wife, Gene, recently refurbished. The suite seats 34, but it's the kind of place that if you draw only official capacity, you know the party's a bust. Most of Jerry and Gene's guests will watch the game standing up, cocktail-party style. Those who want to sit, however, can take their pick from among the 12 sunken blue-leather theater chairs facing the field, or the two blue-and-gray sofas, or the two ottomans covered in wine-colored ostrichskin, or the half dozen or so gray-and-taupe lounge chairs. The place has six TV monitors and a stereo system. And, of course, kitchen, bathroom and coat closet.

J.R. has a game to get ready for, so he leaves Jerry to fend for himself. Jerry pours a Diet Coke and takes it over to the window. The front of the sky box is all glass, with panes that rise at the press of a button. If you're playing in hot pre-season weather, you keep the windows shut and turn up the air conditioning. But on a day like today--and presumably tomorrow-- the windows should be flung open so that the full pomp and circumstance of live N.F.L. football can hit you square in the face. Even today, with no fans in the stands and very few players on the field, you can feel something.

Jerry says that that something is the aura of the Dallas Cowboys, and he'd be happy to sell you some.

There's a dichotomy among N.F.L. owners today. In general, the men who paid big dollars--$65,000,000 or more--to join that exclusive club are more aggressive than the owners who bought decades ago, when you could have a franchise for less than $1,000,000. The old owners don't want to risk eroding their nest eggs, while the new owners have everything to lose by sitting still. Consequently, the new guys see their business as entertainment, not football.

Jerry Jones is in the entertainment business. Both personally and financially, he understands the power of image and celebrity and hero worship. Years ago, he told his father he wanted to own a sports franchise, wanted to be "a sports promoter." He may not yet be as smooth at selling his new product as he wants to be, but he knows what he has to sell. He saw it on the face of that boy he gave the sweat shirt to, and on the face of the boy's father. Jerry has been taking meetings with super-promoter Mark McCormack. He's also talking about selling Valley Ranch and moving the team headquarters to Texas Stadium so the Pooh-Bahs who buy Crown Suites can go over in the middle of the day and hold business meetings watching Cowboys workouts.

But Jerry knows that in order to sell the Dallas aura, he and Jimmy have to slop this losing streak and start winning again. He knows, too, that Herschel Walker is his fastest shot at becoming a have instead of a have-not in the football business. The way you rebuild football teams is to make trades and get more than your share of high draft picks, and Herschel is the key to that. Herschel can't run without a team, but in trade, he can bring the Cowboys the beginnings of a football team. It's a hard bullet to bite, but Herschel helps the Cowboys best by running for somebody else.

"There's nothing on the financial end of this thing that would read like something you ought to do in The Wall Street Journal," says Jerry, "and that's why you didn't have people butting heads to buy the team. you have to believe that you can make changes, that the future is going to be different. You have to believe that if you exercise sound business practices and you're willing to market--well, I believe that's what it's going to be about."

•

Dallas Cowboys Football Schedule for 1989:

September 12 ......... Irving Junior

High School

September 19 ............ Cub Scout

Pack 101

September 26 ........... Texas Blind

Academy

--Dallas Joke, faxed to offices

all over Texas

Game day, and the big question in Jerry's sky box is whether or not Liz Taylor is fat.

It's hard to tell from this distance. Down on the field, Liz and Jerry are motoring out to the 50-yard line in a covered golf cart. "Look! Jerry's talking a blue streak," says one of the ladies in the sky box. "You c an see his hands moving."

Then another lady gets down to it. "Well, is she skinny or is she fat?" About this time, the golf cart stops and Liz alights--wearing a loose cape. "Doesn't look good for skinny," someone in the sky box says.

Fifteen minutes later, all suspicions are confirmed. The door opens and a gallant Jerry Jones, formerly of Little Rock, Arkansas, ushers in Elizabeth Taylor, formerly thin. "But," as many people say later, "she is beautiful."

Liz is seated in the chair of honor, front and center, and that's when Gene Jones takes over. Gene (short for Eugenia) Chambers Jones is a former Miss Arkansas/U.S.A. from Danville who met Jerry their freshman year at the University of Arkansas. Within a few months, neither was dating anyone else. They were married in January of their junior year.

"It's an honor and a pleasure to meet you, Miss Taylor," Gene is saying, but Liz responds so quietly that hardly anyone else in the room can hear her. No matter. The diamond on Liz's finger has probably stunned most of the room senseless, anyway, even here in glittery Dallas.

Gene sits down next to Liz and they talk quietly while the room regains its composure. Having passed Liz off to Gene, Jerry grabs a Diet Coke and begins to watch the game, which already isn't going so well. Only the first quarter and the Cowboys are down 7--0.

Here in Dallas in the shadow of the Nineties, it's harder than ever to separate showbiz from football. But the Cowboys just hauled a fumble 77 yards for a touchdown, tying the score 7--7. Now, that's entertainment.

•

Half time is almost over and Jerry Jones is starting to sprint.

Down on the field, the players are jogging back out, but in a corridor on the second floor of Texas Stadium, Jerry and two of his executives are heading toward the next Crown Suite. Jerry is in the lead, running with an easy gait, his cuff-linked hands pumping and his sports coat still buttoned tight."Jerry!" says George Hayes, who doesn't seem to have much trouble keeping pace. "You won't have to do this always!"

Jerry glances over his shoulder but doesn't break stride. "George, hell!" he says. "This is important!"

The corridor makes a sharp right turn and they stop short. "This it?" Jerry asks, running a hand through his hair. George pulls a list from his coat pocket and studies it. "This is it," he says, and knocks on the door as a smiling Jerry walks in talking. "Keep your fingers crossed!" he booms, and the surprised--and delighted--suite occupants rise to rub shoulders with visiting royalty. Even if his army is down 17--7.

Suite sales are a top priority of this new Cowboys management. When Jerry bought the team, only six of 113 Crown Suites had been sold. To change that, Jerry brought in Hayes, a pal from Little Rock. By the time of the Washington game, 28 additional suites had been sold. Suite sales topped $ 22,000,000 in 1989.

Besides the view and the right to enjoy a cocktail with their football, what suite owners now get for their money is a lot of stroking. On game day, Cowboys scouts drop by each suite and give the owner a game plan; at half time, Jerry himself will often stop and chat. After the game, suite owners are allowed to go to the media room to watch the postgame grilling of Jimmy Johnson up close and personal. It's all part of Jerry's plan to market the juice of big-league sports, big-league media, big-league personalities.

Later, back in his own suite, ferry finds that the room has settled down some from the hyper first half. For one thing, Washington is now threatening a major drubbing. For another, Liz is gone. Midway through the second quarter, she made her exit, saying she was going to watch the game on the TV in the hotel. For much of the second quarter, she had holed up in Jerry's bathroom while one of her people, a woman in jeans and a long coat, considered a request for photographs. "Who're the photographers?" the woman in the long coat asked Gene Jones. "What papers are they from?" Gene said she didn't know but would find out. She also said that if Miss Taylor didn't want to be photographed, that would be fine, too. The perfect hostess.

Eventually, Liz emerged from the bathroom and had her picture taken, even posing for a portrait with Jerry and Gene and two of their three kids. Another souvenir for the credenza. Then she waved to everyone and made her violet eyes smile a farewell smile--almost a little-girl smile-- and suddenly, the room, devoid of real star power, felt large and a little hollow.

•

The Dallas Cowboys are thinking of changing their name to the Dallas Tampons. They're good for only one period, and they don't have a second string.

--Dallas Joke

Fourth quarter and the Redskins are up 20-7. Time for Jerry to go in.

His face is taut, determined, a game face. He pauses a second at the top of the steps, then prances lightly through the fans toward the field. On either side of the aisle, heads begin to turn and fingers begin to point, but he doesn't acknowledge them, doesn't seem to hear the boos. His eyes remain fixed on the horizon.

He leaps over the little gate separating the fans from the players, and now he's at ground zero, in the thick of it, on the field of battle, in the spotlight.

In the craw of the Dallas fans.

Since he became owner, Jerry has made it a practice to stand on the side lines during at least part of every game. He says he's showing support for the team; most of the city seems to think he's just showing.

And, in fact, there is a certain artifice to his being down there. He doesn't mingle with the players or the coaches but instead stands several feet away in front of the media section. He claps, he paces, he poses. He checks his cuff links. He mouths the word Sonovabitch! under his breath. He cradles one elbow in his hand, his other fist under his chin.

Jerry will tell you that ego isn't important to him, that it's the Dallas fans who really own the Cowboys. But it takes an ego to follow a dream, and a dream is a tricky taskmaster. With a dream, you have to watch your back. Jerry says he's well aware that when successful men start writing their autobiographies, that's when their empires start to crumble. He'll also tell you it has been only five years since he stopped having nightmares about missing the team bus and not getting to play.

Of course, he doesn't have to take the bus anymore. He has his own Learjet.

Washington has just scored again--the second time since Jerry has been on the side lines--and now it's Redskins 30, Cowboys 7. He claps conspicuously as his team comes off the field. He's one of few Dallas fans applauding, which may be the point. But does he know yet what even some Cowboys fans say about the people in Dallas-- that they're whiners "too cool to get involved"? That they'd rather drink martinis and criticize than root for the home team?

Jerry's dad is worried about him, and so is his wife. They think he's working too hard, not getting enough rest, putting too much of himself on the line too fast. His business partner, Mike McCoy, says he doesn't offer Jerry advice about the Cowboys unless he's asked. "When all his life a man has wanted a certain automobile and finally gets to buy it, you don't kick the tires and say, 'But what about the warranty?' "

But what about the warranty? Can positive thinking and a passion for selling create a channel near a dry hole? Can two old Razorbacks running together build a winner before the aura fades? Are Jerry's pockets deep enough?

Talk with enough people about Jerry Jones and you'll hear time and again about his resolve. Pat Jones recalls the summer after Jerry w as told he was too small for football; he ate and worked out for months, and in the fall, he played. His college friend Jim Grizzle says that if Jerry feels that someone has the upper hand against him, he'll stay up all night figuring a way to win. Mike McCoy says that people expecting Jerry not to be able to do something will make him work even harder.

"He enjoys the excitement of having pressure on him all the time," says McCoy.

As for his financial exposure, Jerry tells a story about his first year out of college, when he paid $125,000 in loan interest on a salary of $25,000. ft so unnerved him that his hands would shake when he picked up a glass. "I learned my limits early," he says. "And I don't see the acquisition of the Cowboys as a risk that affects me or my family's well-being."

When the offense takes its position, Steve Walsh is in at quarterback for the final moments, relieving Troy Aikman. It's Jimmy Johnson's admission of defeat. Just the day before, Jerry was talking about how, because he once played the game, he understands better than most owners what the players are going through. "I want Jimmy and the players and the coaches to know," he said, "that I hope they don't think our record is doing anything in any way--in any way--but increasing my resolve." Now Jerry aims his applause toward Jimmy, who is already looking dazed.

The seconds tick. On the Dallas side, scores of seats are already empty. Sitting on the bench, a few players are starting to assume that bowed-head position that looks so poignant in the newspaper on the day after. Tom Landry's fans should love that. Like Jimmy says, some people adapt too well to losing.

The gun sounds and it's over. Suddenly, the field is awash with people, and as Jimmy Johnson cuts against the grain toward the locker room, Jerry bobs and weaves and spins his way through the crowd to catch up with his old teammate. They don't say a word to each other, but Jerry reaches out with his right hand and grasps Jimmy's left forearm, and he squeezes hard as they walk into the dark tunnel together.

" 'The deejay vowed celibacy until the Cowboys win,' Jerry tells his secretary. We'll do what we can.' "

" You just don't go into a town with Tom Landry and Tex Schramm and cut their nuts off in public.' "