Machota: Jerry Jones - Dallas Cowboys aren’t living off their 1990s brand

Jerry Jones: Dallas Cowboys aren’t living off their 1990s brand; ‘The Cowboys are living the brand’
By Jon Machota
jmachota@dallasnews.com
11:32 am on October 1, 2013 | Permalink

Jerry Jones said Tuesday that he doesn’t want Dallas Cowboys fans to adjust their expectations because the NFL has so much parity.

The Cowboys owner and general manager said the franchise has always been about creating fan interest and he has no problem with the fans not being satisfied with mediocre results.

“I don’t expect them to think any differently,” Jones said on KRLD-FM. “We push it out there. We build up expectations. We certainly try every way we can to have the Cowboys front and center. We do it with our great stadium. We try to do it every chance we get on television. That’s the lineage of the Cowboys.”

But that lineage has also included a Super Bowl drought that’s approaching two decades and a 130-130 record since 1997.

During the weekly radio interview, Jones was asked if the franchise is still living off the brand of those Super Bowl teams of the 1990s.

“No,” Jones responded. “The Cowboys are living the brand. We’re making the brand. I don’t say you live off a brand, but you do the kinds of things that help create interest. It’s well-known that the Cowboys, in the non-NFL cities, the kind of interest that we have. That’s interest there. There can be two kinds of interest. It can be positive interest. It can be people tuning in to see them get beat. The main thing is they’re relevant and that’s important.”

No, they are living off the America's Team brand from the 70s still, actually.

mschmidt64 said:

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As bad as that entire statement is, the worst part is that last line about being relevant.

That proves that winning is not what's most important to him. As long as he's making money and the Cowboys are relevant in one way or another, Jerry will be more than happy to keep things as they are.

Texas Ace said:

As bad as that entire statement is, the worst part is that last line about being relevant.

That proves that winning is not what's most important to him. As long as he's making money and the Cowboys are relevant in one way or another, Jerry will be more than happy to keep things as they are.

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Yep. I said that for years as long as the Cowboys can be in the .500 range going into late December with a shot a playoff spot then he'll be happy. Vying for championships is long past. Now it's just about being relevant late into the season. It took three 5-11 years in a row before he made any significant changes before. Probably take at least that before we see any again.

says the man who's kept the same title since the 1990s

But....but...Jerry just wants to WIN!!!

boozeman said:

But....but...Jerry just wants to WIN!!!

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I used to defend Jerry by noting that he was a lousy GM but a great owner/businessman, but then it dawned on me that a great CEO wouldn't have kept a failing GM in place all these years.

bbgun said:

I used to defend Jerry by noting that he was a lousy GM but a great owner/businessman, but then it dawned on me that a great CEO wouldn't have kept a failing GM in place all these years.

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Now youre cooking with peanut oil..

bbgun said:

I used to defend Jerry by noting that he was a lousy GM but a great owner/businessman, but then it dawned on me that a great CEO wouldn't have kept a failing GM in place all these years.

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Welcome to 10 years ago.

VA Cowboy said:

Welcome to 10 years ago.

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I still use a beeper.

Embrace the hatred.

Funny how he suggests expectations shouldn't be adjusted due to parity, but in the very same interview says this:

Jerry Jones says Cowboys push their brand aggressively, and when they don't win, it creates 'a lot of discontent'



The Cowboys have created their own burden of expectations, owner Jerry Jones acknowledged on his radio show Tuesday.

“We push it out there. We certainly try every way we can to have the Cowboys front and center,” Jones told KRLD 105.3 FM “The Fan” in his weekly radio appearance. “We do it with our great stadium. We try to do it every chance we get on television. That’s the lineage of the Cowboys. For years, the Cowboys under Tex Schramm were one of the few teams that carried media on the plane with it when it traveled away.

“So the Cowboys have always been about creating interest, creating attention.”

But for the eighth time in 11 years, the Cowboys are 2-2 out of the gate. Since winning the Super Bowl in January 1996, they are a .500 team.

“When you live in a world of parity and you can basically take the, if you will, visibility of the Cowboys and really push it out there – push it out there locally, you can push it out there nationally – then you’re going to create some diminished, some problems, with expectations when you don’t win the football game.”

The Cowboys have made seven playoff appearances since their last championship but have advanced only twice. They remain one of the NFL’s most-watched and valuable teams, however, and Jones was asked if the Cowboys are living off their brand.

“We’re living the brand. We’re making the brand,” Jones said with vigor. “I don’t say you live off the brand, but you do the kinds of things that help create interest. It’s well-know, the Cowboys, in the non-NFL cities, the kind of interest that we have. That’s interest there. That can be two kinds of interest – that can be positive interest, that can be people tuning in to see them get beat.

“The main thing is, they’re relevant, and that’s important. And I feel very strongly when you have your good times and you can really do some good with it.”

Jones said the changes the Cowboys made in the offseason were spurred by his desire to get them out of the 8-8 “rut” they have been in for two years.

“Now, nobody guarantees you .500 in this league,” he said. “You’ve got to really get in here, and you’ve got to have games like we had the other day, the one against Kansas City, you’ve got to figure out how to win at least half of those games on the road. So bottom line is, we’ve got to play to the occasion. We didn’t play well. We hit a team that if you look on paper, you look at the shape they were in on paper, we had a good chance to win that game, even though it was on the road. And when you don’t do that, it’s going to create a lot of discontent.”

-- Carlos Mendez