A New Way of Doing Business

He stood on the sideline watching his Cowboys, knowing he had written out checks for $90 million in the past year to spur his employees to greatness and win another Super Bowl, and here they were being embarrassed by the woeful Saints.

They had the chance to win a division title, the seventh in Jerry Jones’ 11-year tenure as team owner, but with everything on the line they went flat.

“When we lost to San Francisco in the NFC championship game in Barry Switzer’s first year, I went to my car and cried,” Jones said. “But this time the emotions were different. I got mad. I mean I just got real mad. I felt stupid; I just felt this foolish feeling.”

So Jones started thinking, and the owner who has had more impact on professional football the past decade than any other in winning three Super Bowls with two coaches and teaching his peers how to make more money, decided again to overhaul the way he conducts business.

“It just said to me, there’s a smarter way to do it,” said Jones, whose individual decisions usually become NFL-wide in scope. “Change is now a given.”

There will be no more gigantic signing bonuses, no more guaranteed money, he said, because he’s no longer convinced that today’s millionaire athlete has the motivation to win at all costs.

He also believes that it is a mistake now to tie up most of the team’s money in its superstars, as the Cowboys have done in the past, because the salary cap does not allow a team that has lost those players to injuries to find worthy replacements.

He will continue to pay good money, he said, but now it will have to be earned through incentive propositions, a chilling message for 35 players on the Cowboys’ roster, including Deion Sanders and Michael Irvin, who will become free agents after the season.

“I’m willing to pay it out,” Jones said. “But I want to do it in a smart way, a way that makes the team better.”

In the days that have followed that stinging loss to New Orleans on Dec. 24, the Cowboys have learned remarkably that they still have a chance to make the playoffs, needing only a win over the punchless Giants in Texas Stadium on Sunday.

“I thought we used all of our nine lives up,” said Cowboy defender Ebenezer Ekuban. “I guess we only used eight.”

But the anger has continued to fester in Jones, sitting this day behind his desk at the Cowboys’ Valley Ranch headquarters, his hand drawing thick black lines across the papers on his desk as if he is trying to obliterate expectations gone awry.

“This is professional sports, and we are challenged now,” said Jones. “Does a multimillionaire give it up the way he used to give it up when he’s in the interior line there fighting in the middle of a game? Do you give it everything if you are totally independent financially and secure? We expect the competitiveness to come out there, but does it as much anymore?

“I suspect that we’re making a mistake. We’re playing a game and I think we’ve got to keep some serious financial incentives out there. It’s also a game that expects injury and nobody is above it, so how long are we going to go along with that and see the bottom fall out for a team because it loses one or two key players? Therefore I question the guaranteed money we’re paying to people, and the way we are setting up our teams.”

This week he met with more than 20 of his players to remind them how important it is to him, the guy who signs their paychecks, to win football games. His expectations, he said, remain the same despite the possibility of finishing 8-8 this season: to win the Super Bowl to close out the ‘90s the proper way.

“I don’t think anyone has questioned how passionate Jerry is about the Cowboys and about winning,” quarterback Troy Aikman said of that meeting. “It was reiterated for those who maybe didn’t know that.”

The NFL way of doing business now, which includes stripping the best teams of their depth and developing players because of free agency and salary-cap restrictions, already has taken its toll on the 49ers, Packers and Broncos. But Jones, who reversed the Cowboys’ bad image a few years ago with a change in attitude, said he is willing again to alter his approach.

“I will do whatever it takes,” said Jones, who dismissed Coach Jimmy Johnson after a second consecutive Super Bowl victory. “Jimmy was out because I felt we would not have the chance to win another Super Bowl with him.”

This would be the appropriate time for Coach Chan Gailey, currently 17-14 with one wild-card loss on his Cowboy resume, to take a deep breath.

“I can see where people might think, ‘Hey, he ran out a guy who had won two Super Bowls in a row,’ ” Jones said. “ ‘So he’s not the type to be very patient the way things are going.’ ”

And although the local radio stations and many Cowboy fans have been calling for Gailey’s dismissal, Jones said that is not one of the dramatic changes he has in mind for his team.

“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “We will change what we are doing, but I don’t think there will be a change there.

“Listen, there are serious, I mean serious, things that need to be done, but as far as just totally blowing it up, I’m not going to do that. It’s not called for. The system is an issue, but I’m fresh off making two or three significant commitments that I am very comfortable with.”

This would be the appropriate time for Gailey, currently at odds with Aikman, to take a deep breath.

“We have committed to the quarterback,” said Jones, obviously already picking sides in the feud, “and we’re not only committed to that quarterback, but committed to his style and his method of play.”

So instead of changing the man who coaches the Cowboys, Jones will insist on changing the way that man does his business.

“I like the fundamentals of Chan, and he has that work ethic and willingness and intensity,” Jones said. “Our first year with Jimmy, he made a change with David Shula [offensive coordinator]. We’ll get in here and make sure we’re doing things differently, significantly different, maybe even to the point where it’s looking like we had changed [the coach].”

That meeting among Jones, Aikman and Gailey has yet to take place. Maybe the coach will balk at changing the offensive philosophy that brought him to the top ranks of the NFL and will be forced to leave, but whatever the outcome, there is no mystery to Jones’ motivation.

“You have to understand his passion for the game and his passion for winning,” Gailey said. “And if you don’t understand that, then it will cloud your viewpoint and it will never allow you to understand what a good-hearted person he is. This is someone terribly misunderstood, a good man, who only wants the best for this team.”

Jones’ expectations, of course, are always unreal, but shouldn’t that be the driving force behind all professional sports? He paid his players $41.5 million in signing bonuses this season because he believed they could win it all again.

“To do some of the things that I have done in the past, you have got to want to win more than you want money,” Jones said. “You know the story about old Scrooge, he didn’t want money to go buy things and entertain and have more friends. He wanted money just to touch and stack up.

“I would hope that as much as anyone would look at what I’ve done to create revenue that they would also say, ‘By the way, he’s not interested in keeping it. He’ll spend it.’ But the way this system is right now, how many people are going to be willing to continue to spend it and finish 8-8? There’s not many, I can tell you that, and not many that are going to spend what it takes to notch it up and try to win two more ballgames.”

You know what’s coming next.

“I’m willing to notch it up,” Jones said, “and I won’t disappoint anybody who would expect anything less.”