NFL PLAYOFFS : His Methods Were Not Always Popular, but With Success, Owner Jerry Jones Has Them . . . : Delighted in Dallas

The most powerful man in the NFL is holding a plastic cup filled with iced tea.

The cup begins to shake.

The man gasps for breath.

“That used to be me,” Jerry Jones says, suddenly calm and smiling. “Really nervous. Up against it. Feeling it. Bad.”

In his right hand are his reading glasses. Before he bought the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, he didn’t need them.

Also nearby are his heart pills. He didn’t need those, either, until doctors discovered an irregular heartbeat two years after he had bought the team.

“They said it was from abuse,” Jones says.

Like working every day until 4 a.m., trying to figure out how to build a football team as if it was an oil business.

Like insisting on standing on the sidelines that first season, even though fans would curse him and call him a thief.

Like insisting on reading his mail that first season, even though it often included death threats.

“Doctors say I’ve got what some people call a good-time heart,” Jones says.

So where were the good times?

Other owners compared him to a child with a new toy. His own head coach insinuated that he didn’t know anything about football.

His team won one game, then seven games, and Jerry Jones could not work hard enough.

“There was a time here that my father was close to going over the edge,” son Stephen says.

Five years later, friends say the shaking has stopped.

The Cowboys are on the verge of their second consecutive NFC title. The NFL is headed in a vastly different direction.

And much of it is because of the man who still likes his iced tea in tall plastic cups.

When the Cowboys face the San Francisco 49ers here Sunday for the conference championship, Jones will be embraced by everyone from Texas Gov. Ann Richards to Hank Williams Jr.

When he walks through the press box during the game, nobody will snicker.

When he goes onto the field before the end of the game, everybody will cheer.

When he goes home afterward, well, he will probably start working again and not stop until early Monday morning.

This is a man who still arrives at work some days and stays in the parking lot, talking on his car phone for 25 minutes.

OK, so maybe if you’re the most powerful man in the NFL, the shaking never stops.

*

The day after Thanksgiving, with the rest of the football world chuckling over Leon Lett and wondering about the future of the Dallas Cowboys, their owner was hip-deep in pond water.

Jerry Jones and his family, including his only daughter, were duck hunting in an Arkansas hollow.

The amazing thing was not that they fought over every duck shot, but that Jones talked only about the ducks.

“I think he has finally realized that he can enjoy what has happened,” said Stephen, 29, a Cowboy vice president and the club’s contract negotiator.

And who wouldn’t? In the last two years, this former oilman has:

--Restored glamour to the NFL’s premier money-making franchise. He took a team that had not been to a championship game in six years to two title games in five years.

In doing this, he was not afraid to cut loose legendary coach Tom Landry and top player Herschel Walker.

“When I got the team, nobody gave me a manual on how to do this,” Jones said. “But I knew I wanted to win football games.”

--Negotiated and closed a stunning $4.4-billion television contract, giving the owners about $6 million more apiece than if they had followed Commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s advice to accept a cheaper contract extension last year.

Jones was not reluctant to dump CBS, a longtime partner, and add the innovative Fox network.

“Yes, I wanted Fox,” he said. “They brought something potentially tremendous to the table.”

He has made some mistakes, notably his ill-advised decision to make Emmitt Smith wait two regular-season games before signing him to a $13.6-million contract.

But he learned. When it was time to pay Troy Aikman $50 million a couple of months later, he did not hesitate.

“Jerry is the leader of the new breed of NFL owners looking to take the sport into the next century,” said Leigh Steinberg, Aikman’s agent.

Other owners might not like Jones’ brazen style, but they grudgingly respect him. Profits talk.

“He has been a significant contributor to the welfare of the NFL,” said Art Modell, the Cleveland Browns’ owner. “He’s a fast learner. He’s been very good for the league.”

Just wait until the league hears what he wants to do next.

As a member of the NFL’s Competition Committee, expect Jones to propose rules changes bringing in the two-point conversion, reducing situation substitution and even punishing teams for missing field goals.

Although he would not reveal details of his plans, they could involve forcing a team to surrender the ball 15 or 20 yards behind the spot of an attempted field goal if the kick is missed.

“Now that everything else has been settled, it’s time to look at the game,” Jones said. “We need more decision making there. We need more appeal for the ‘90s.”

Expect something to happen. Even in thickly paneled NFL meeting rooms where the money is old and the cigar smoke Havana, Jones has earned the right to be heard.

Now, if he could only get his coach to understand him.

The pebble in Jones’ shoe remains, ironically enough, former college roommate Jimmy Johnson.

Hiring Johnson from the University of Miami soon after buying the team was Jones’ first big risk. They had been college teammates at the University of Arkansas, even road roommates, but there were questions about Johnson’s leadership and stability.

Now that Johnson has been around long enough to have answered those questions, he is asking them back.

He questions Jones’ football knowledge. He questions Jones’ input, even though the owner has made no secret that he wants to be involved as the team’s general manager.

And Johnson never passes up a chance to note that he and Jones are not best friends, that they do not even socialize.

“Jerry is better at making money than anybody I’ve ever met,” Johnson said this week. “Me, I win football games.”

Jones hears these comments and sighs.

“The facts are, I have been very active for a long time in helping Jimmy’s career,” Jones said. “And the facts are that every big trade that is made, every transaction, it’s a we decision.”

Jones shakes his head.

“But I don’t need Jimmy to say that. His willingness to do that or not do that, that is just Jimmy.”

And this is Jerry. Ask him if he worries about replacing Johnson, and he smiles.

“If something should happen to Jimmy, God forbid, worrying about who would coach the Cowboys is not exactly high on my list,” Jones says. “The situation we have here now, who wouldn’t want to coach the Cowboys?”

SUNDAY’S GAMES

* AFC CHAMPIONSHIP

Kansas City at Buffalo

Time: 9:30 a.m.

TV: Channel 4

* NFC CHAMPIONSHIP

San Francisco at Dallas

Time: 1 p.m.

TV: Channel 2.

SUPER BOWL

Date: Sunday, Jan. 30.

Site: Georgia Dome, Atlanta.

Time: 3 p.m.

TV: Channel 4.