A new Netflix docuseries, ‘America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,’ explores the Dallas Cowboys’ sustained popularity despite a lack of recent championships.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones attributes the team’s value and popularity to his hard work and marketing efforts.
Jones defends Dallas’ performance, citing its overall win record the past three decades and near misses in playoff runs.
Again, for maybe the 29th time over the years, I had to ask Jerry Jones to explain how the Dallas Cowboys – the most valuable sports franchise on the planet – have sustained such immense popularity despite continually falling short of winning championships.
Then again, why ask? Just look around. Or watch.
There’s a fresh answer with the compelling eight-part docuseries, “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,” that dropped this week on Netflix.
It reminds us that no team does drama quite like the Cowboys.
And it reinforces the fact that no team markets itself quite like “America’s Team.”
“I explain it by hard work. I bust my ass,” Jones, referring to the franchise’s value and popularity, told USA TODAY Sports over lunch recently in his training camp office in Oxnard, California. “This exact same hard work that is going on in the football. I work my ass off. And that hasn’t slowed down. This is the busiest I’ve ever been at training camp.”
All that busy work, though, hasn’t resulted in a contract extension for All-Pro linebacker Micah Parsons, whose “hold-in” attempt for a new deal has juiced the summer episode of the NFL’s longest-running soap opera. And Jones freely admits he doesn’t mind the drama.
After all, the rift with Parsons keeps the Cowboys ticking on the relevance meter.
The docuseries, meanwhile, adds more layers to the buzz. Sure, the rise and fall of Jerry’s Cowboys – who haven’t even advanced to the NFC title game in the 29 years since winning a third Super Bowl crown during the 1990s – deserves documentary treatment. There are electric characters. Rich storylines. Fascinating details. Heaps of controversy.
Yet despite revealing perspectives shared by the likes of Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman and Charles Haley, among others, the docuseries feels too much like a slick, PR-crafted production. I mean, did they really need those cheesy Western-themed backdrops and effects?
Also, for all the candid revelations from Irvin – who provided backstory from his 1996 drug possession trial and spilled the tea on the “White House” near the team’s headquarters, where some players engaged in booze, drugs and sex escapades – there was no such depth relating to multiple controversies attached to Jones.
Not that I’m surprised. Somebody had to sign off on all the access and cooperation that gave the project its juice. Rather than delve into the team owner’s stance a few years ago against national anthem protests by NFL players or touch the since-settled legal issues linked to a woman alleging to be Jones’ illegitimate daughter, the directing duo of brothers Chaplain and Maclain Way portrayed Jones in a manner he would undoubtedly approve of.
Sure, Jones ignited controversy from the start of his ownership in 1989 when he, well, aptly replaced the legendary Tom Landry with Jimmy Johnson. And during the mid-‘90s he sued NFL partners in breaking off to secure his own massive marketing deals. Look at how that controversy turned out: Forbes, in its latest compilation, values the franchise at $12.8 billion. And Jones, who bought the team for roughly $150 million, is in the Hall of Fame, having forever changed the NFL business landscape as the league’s most powerful owner.
Yet it will be tough for longtime Cowboys fans to waltz down memory lane without connecting the nostalgia with the current state of affairs. The final episode of the docuseries titled, “The Drought,” covers the 29 years since Super Bowl 30.
“What’s the common denominator? Jones. I get it,” Jones said.
Then Jerry, who is on his eighth head coach since Johnson but will indeed get testy when asked about turning over the reins as GM, digs in.
“How long has it been since Buffalo won the Super Bowl?” he said, knowing that the five-time defending AFC East champion Bills have never won a Super Bowl. “Buffalo hasn’t been chopped liver. They’re solid. They’re probably in the top third of the NFL.”
The Cowboys, meanwhile, posted three consecutive 12-5 records under since-departed coach Mike McCarthy, with two NFC East titles, before sinking to an injury-riddled 7-10 finish in 2024.
“I just can’t get as convicted that the way we’re doing it, that our approach to trying to win a Super Bowl, that that needs to change,” Jones said. “I guess that’s why I’m so defensive.”
He knows. The visibility that comes with being the NFL’s biggest draw just increases the heat when they flop, year after year, in chasing another Super Bowl.
Put another way, Jones says, “The ass-kicking that comes with this doesn’t deter me at all.”
Of course, Jones, 82, can still sell it. When he maintains that over the past three decades the Cowboys are among the top six teams in the NFL for victories, it illustrates how hope is such a tangible resource.
“That shows that you’re not defunct,” he said. “Fair? I know we’re in range to have success.”
But still. A 29-year drought?
“On two or three occasions, if not for a nano-second, a nano-factor, we would’ve been in the Super Bowl,” he said, including the would-be Dez Bryant catch in a 2014 NFC divisional playoff loss at Green Bay, as an example. “So, I hang my hat on those times.
“And I hang my hat on the fact that nobody gets to be in 20 of them. Maybe they experienced four of them, or three of them, or like Charles (Haley), five. Thirty years sounds like you should be in half of them. I don’t look at it that way. I look at it like how many people have never been in one? I look at the three (Dallas won in the ‘90s) and I feel like I at least have three years left, or four or five years left, and there’s always the promise that I can get it this season. Or get it next season.”
Now that’s some serious spin. The scene from Dallas’ last playoff game – a blowout loss against the Packers in a 2023 NFC wild-card round matchup at JerryWorld that was the worst postseason setback in the franchise’s history – certainly provided compelling images for the final episode of the docuseries. Jones was in the locker room consoling players, including Parsons – the man now embroiled in a contract dispute.
He hugged Parsons and whispered that the blowout wasn’t the fault of the star player. To which Parsons mumbled, “I just wanna win.”
What a contrast to the vibe from the early episodes, which detailed how Johnson established a tone. The coach once refused to allow meal service on the team’s chartered flight home after a disturbing loss. And in a classic tirade his first year, Johnson bellowed, “The asthma field is over there!” after one player explained why he collapsed while running wind sprints.
Sure, times have changed. Some of the drills Johnson ordered during his demanding training camps wouldn’t be tolerated today, under the collective bargaining agreement. Even so, somebody has to win big. And that is no longer the Cowboys’ way.
At least when it comes to winning on the field. Otherwise, business is booming for a franchise still commanding a huge presence on the NFL relevance map.
Contact Jarrett Bell at jbell@usatoday.com or follow on social media: On X: @JarrettBell
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