When Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys in February 1989 and then fired legendary head coach Tom Landry, virtually no one in the franchise\u2019s fandom was happy with the Arkansas oil man.<\/p>\n
Then, he installed himself as president and general manager \u2014 an unheard of move in the NFL \u2014 riling even more of the team’s supporters.<\/p>\n
But none of his decisions in the early days of owning America\u2019s Team had prepared him for the extreme criticism from Cowboys Nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was Darth Vader,\u201d Jones, 82, recalls in the new Netflix docuseries America\u2019s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re serious about their football in the state of Texas, almost as much as we are in Arkansas,\u201d he says in the doc.<\/em><\/p>\n After Landry\u2019s firing, more than 100,000 people turned out for a parade through the streets of downtown Dallas to honor the Cowboys coach of 29 years.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cJerry and the Jones family had broken into the museum and taken our most valuable possession,\u201d former ABC affiliate WFAA-TV sportscaster Dale Hansen says in the doc, describing the affection fans had for the former coach.Looking back, even Jones confesses it may have been a rash decision to fire Landry \u2014 whose team notched a 3-13 record during his final season in 1988.<\/p>\n \u201cThe firing of Coach Landry was certainly one of the great PR missteps, maybe of all time,\u201d Jones says. \u201cBecause I still wear that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n At a press conference later termed the Saturday Night Massacre \u2014 a reference to the Watergate scandal \u2014 Jones announced his intentions with the team. One day later, he fired Landry and named longtime friend and fellow University of Arkansas teammate Jimmy Johnson as the new coach of the Cowboys.<\/p>\n Charlotte Jones Anderson, Jones’ daughter and the team\u2019s executive vice president and chief brand officer, recalls thinking after the press conference, “What do we do?\u201d<\/p>\n Jones says he had no choice but to forge ahead.<\/p>\n His team in Dallas \u2014 nicknamed the City of Hate due to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination \u2014 was coming together, and that\u2019s when Jones truly laid it all on the line, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cWith all that hate, I could stop and cry or I could just keep going,\u201d Jones says. \u201cBut I\u2019m not gonna take my marbles and go home. I can\u2019t, I burned all my ships when I landed.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys in February 1989 and then fired legendary head coach Tom Landry, virtually no one in the franchise\u2019s fandom was happy… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":80440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"yoast_head":"\n