PRO FOOTBALL / DAILY REPORT : NFC

While Jerry Jones delighted in his Nike caper, the rest of the NFL fumed.

“He enjoys the maverick image,” said Carmen Policy, president of the 49ers and the Dallas owner’s favorite jousting partner. “But the man’s gone too far; he’s out of control.”

Jones pulled his latest raid on what the league and its union consider their private province Monday night by announcing his own deal with Nike in a news release headed “Cowboys’ Owner Bucks NFL Again.”

It not only upstaged his team’s 35-0 demolition of the Giants, but again alienated the league establishment by attacking the revenue-sharing concept that’s made them rich. And it again set off an anti-Jones reaction.

“It’s up to the league to get in there and see if it’s legal. I don’t know it is or not,” Buffalo Bill owner Ralph Wilson said. “If people are going to go off in all directions, the league is going to erode. And fast.”

Once more, Jones showed he can step outside league guidelines and strike his own deal at the expense of the other 29 teams. The Nike deal could even help Jones in his attempt to sign Deion Sanders, a major client of the sports apparel giant.

Jones and Policy are battling for Sanders, the baseball player-cornerback who helped San Francisco win the Super Bowl last season. That became more urgent Monday night when Kevin Smith, the Cowboys’ best cornerback, went down with an Achilles’ tendon injury that’s expected to sideline him for the season.

But there was a general sense around the league that Jones is biting the hand that feeds him by trying to separate the Cowboys’ revenue from NFL Properties, the league’s licensing arm. During Monday night’s game, the Dallas coaches and staff members wore no logos on their plain white shirts, not even anything that said “Cowboys.”

Jones already has bucked the league by selling Pepsi rather than the league-sanctioned Coca-Cola at Texas Stadium.

NFL spokesman Joe Browne said Jones’ Nike contract is “an apparent violation of league policies.” Browne added that the league constitution requires Commissioner Paul Tagliabue to give the Cowboys a hearing “and he will promptly do so.”

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A magnetic resonance imaging test showed Smith has an incomplete rupture of the right Achilles’ tendon and surgery will be required, perhaps this week, Cowboy spokesman Rich Dalrymple said.