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Included with the purchase of the Dallas Cowboys was a $10-million note on Cowboys Center. Conceived by Schramm as a state-of-the-art headquarters and training facility, Cowboys Center was nevertheless flawed, a symbol of the Cowboys in their decadent stage. It has a sumptuous workout room for the cheerleaders, conveniently located just down the hall from the executive wing and visible through a picture window, but it didn't even have an indoor weight room for the players until Jones built one, a year after he moved in. Actually, his first inclination -- once he saw the squash courts, the pond-size whirlpool, and the $14,000 monthly electric bill -- was to exercise his $3-million buyout option on the property and consolidate operations at Texas Stadium. But this was Dallas in 1989, and Jones persuaded the bank to retire the Cowboys Center note for $5 million. Then he had the maintenance staff remove every other bulb from the floodlights that ring the complex; a token gesture, perhaps, but one that helped him sleep at night.
By that first summer, Jones had let the old guard go, including Landry; Schramm; and Gil Brandt, the player-personnel director, whose departure all by itself removed a quarter-million-dollar expense-account item from the Cowboys' budget. When Jones asked Dixon, the new team treasurer, to search for other items he might cut, Dixon was at first hesitant. What did he know about the football business? But what Dixon quickly found was that he could save tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars simply by putting jobs out to bid -- everything from printing tickets and programs to providing training-room supplies, hotel rooms, and insurance. Dixon thought it odd, for instance, that the Cowboys were paying $1 million for a workers' comp policy from which the total benefits received averaged just $30,000 a year; today they pay $300,000 for similar coverage.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Johnson and his staff were systematically ridding the Cowboys of high-priced, underperforming veterans like Herschel Walker (traded to Minnesota in 1989 in exchange for a handful of players and several draft picks) and replacing them with players who were young and hungry and (happily for Jones) willing to work for less. The Cowboys spent money when they had to: $11.2 million on quarterback Troy Aikman, their first-round draft choice in 1989; and an undisclosed amount on running back Emmitt Smith, another first-rounder, in 1989. But nearly everybody else, Jones pinched. According to agent Leigh Steinberg, the Cowboys under Jones have perfected an innovative draft-day tactic that both holds down salaries and eliminates holdouts. "They'll call you up in the five minutes between rounds," Steinberg says, "and offer x dollars, which is probably fair market value minus 10%. And they will not draft you unless you agree."
All of which is part of closing the back door. But what about opening the big front door? The largest source of income for virtually every team in the NFL is something over which no individual owner has any control: the national television contract. Negotiated jointly, divided evenly among the 28 teams, network-television money is the great equalizer in professional football, the reason a franchise in Green Bay, Wis., can compete successfully with franchises in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In 1989, the Cowboys' first year under Jones, each team received $17 million in television money. That was the final year of the old contract, and the question of what lay ahead was one of the great unknowns Jones faced. As it turned out, the new four-year contract was a better one and provided a solid revenue base going forward: $26 million in 1990, rising each year toward $39 million in 1993. After television come ticket sales, which bring in about $13 million per team. Again, football, unlike baseball, tends to spread the wealth around. The home team splits the gate 60-40 with the visiting team, after deductions for day-of-game expenses. But here, at least, Jones had some room to be creative.
Texas Stadium was built by the city of Irving in 1971 on land donated by Clint Murchison. It was financed in part with 40-year, zero-interest bonds bought by the original season-ticket holders and suite owners. In 1985 Bright "defeased" the remaining debt on the stadium with federal bonds, so Jones came in debt-free. In fact, what Jones bought from Bright was not the stadium itself but something better: the operating rights -- all the benefits of ownership minus the obligation to pay taxes. That means Jones pays the city a modest fixed lease and picks up the operating expenses, about $5 million. In exchange, he captures 100% of the revenue streams from parking, concessions, novelties, stadium advertising, and suite sales; the last is the key.
Of the 105 new suites Bright built in 1985, only 6 had been sold by the time Jones took control of Texas Stadium. Worth an average of $85,000 a year, the empty suites were a significant revenue opportunity for Jones. Under a program called Partners with the Cowboys, Jones and marketing director George Hays have tried to capitalize on the Cowboys' sizzle -- and start the juices flowing. Besides receiving tickets, VIP parking passes, stadium-club membership, and other game-day necessities, Partners (and their clients) are invited to accompany the team on road trips, are visited by former players in the suites, are offered the use of Texas Stadium or Cowboys Center for private functions, and are allowed to watch the Cowboys practice (even, sometimes, when the media aren't).
In three years Jones sold or leased all 99 empty suites, worth $50 million in present and future revenues. Then, last winter, with the Cowboys on their way to the Super Bowl and the sizzle building to a roar, Jones decided to build 68 more suites at Texas Stadium. Among them are 9 he calls Platinums, each with a nine-foot-high ceiling, a private bathroom, a curved bar topped with Italian marble, six television sets tuned to other games around the league, power windows, and air-conditioning -- all yours for $200,000 a year. By opening day, he had sold 6. Sales and lease arrangements on all the new suites Jones built have so far brought commitments worth an additional $22 million.
