Back in May 2007, when NFL owners voted to stage Super Bowl XLV in the Dallas Cowboys’ yet-to-be-constructed stadium, executive vice president Stephen Jones looked ahead excitedly to the week when he’d welcome the football world to North Texas.
Though he knew it was a statistical longshot – no team has played in a Super Bowl held in its home stadium – Jones had daydreams about the prospect of the Cowboys serving as the NFC’s representative, the ultimate fantasy for the Ultimate Game. At the very least, Jones and his father, Jerry – the Cowboys’ extroverted owner – believed heading into the 2010 season that their ‘Boys would be squarely in the championship mix.
Instead, over the next 10 days, the Joneses will experience the semi-nauseating endeavor of hosting a Texas-sized spectacle of a Super Bowl in the wake of what Stephen characterized as the most dismal season of their two-plus-decade tenure as owners.
“In the 21 years we’ve had it, I’d say it’s the worst one we’ve had,” the younger Jones said earlier this week. “We’ve had bad teams that didn’t do well, but maybe you had that feeling going in. This year, we were so hopeful about our chances, and there we were at 1-5 with no quarterback and pretty much knowing where we’d end up.
“We had such high expectations for this team – and that’s why this is the toughest season we’ve had. The overwhelming thing you think about is what went wrong. And to sit there and have to chew on that, there’s not a lot of happiness.”
So, while two other storied NFL franchises, the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers, celebrate the prospect of another title, the men who run the Cowboys will do their best to suppress their jealousy.
This was not a collapse they saw coming. After a promising 2009 season that featured an NFC East title and a first-round playoff victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, the Cowboys enjoyed a relatively uneventful offseason, as the Joneses believed they had the goods to make a title run.
Then the games began, and calamity ensued. Quarterback Tony Romo sustained a season-ending collarbone fracture in a 41-35 Monday-night loss to the Giants which dropped Dallas to 1-5. Two weeks and two listless defeats later, head coach Wade Phillips was fired and replaced by offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, who won five of eight games to boost the Cowboys’ record to 6-10 and was ultimately hired on a non-interim basis.
As a result, Stephen Jones is hopeful that the team can bounce back in 2011 – though there’s the small matter of an anticipated labor crisis and owner-imposed lockout. In the meantime, a week’s worth of schmoozing, glad-handing and grinning and bearing the lingering disappointment awaits.
“We’ll be running around a bunch, but we don’t really have a ton of responsibilities, other than taking care of our sponsors and such,” Jones said. “We’ll obviously be there as ambassadors, but for the most part they’re not our parties and it’s not our show. The league takes over our stadium, and we get an increased ticket allotment – more than a normal team but not as much as the participating teams. We don’t get as much as you might think.”
The Joneses will host a party next Thursday night for their fellow owners at Cowboys Stadium, but three days later the league will control the cavernous venue. It was the NFL’s idea to sell the thousands of party passes which will allow fans to stand outside the stadium and watch the game on a large video screen at $200 a pop. The Cowboys employ a similar concept during regular-season games, but those tickets cost $29 and allow standing-room access inside the stadium.
“We met with some league people and told them how it worked and how it’s been a great experience for our fans,” Jones said. “They took it from there.”
As for where the Cowboys go from here, Jones said not to expect drastic changes.
“We still have a belief that we’ve got good football players,” he said. “If you talk to a lot of people in this league, I’d say we rate pretty high in terms of talent. But just ‘cause you’ve got skill and talent, it doesn’t mean you’re going to win games – as we saw this season.
“In this business, you’ve got caps and commitments, and you can only change so much. We like Tony, and we like a lot of our core players. And that’s good because, realistically, you can’t just start over in any given year.”
Jones also reiterated his recent denial of an ESPN Dallas report that the team would consider trading 2010 first-round draft pick Dez Bryant, who enjoyed a promising rookie season before breaking his ankle in early December. The report, citing a Cowboys front-office source, was precipitated by a radio interview in which former Cowboys and current San Diego Chargers wideout Patrick Crayton questioned Bryant’s work ethic.
“Not true,” Jones said of the notion that Bryant might be traded. “We don’t put any credence in reports from anybody outside of our organization.”
The organizations which will play in Super Bowl XLV have each faced off against the Cowboys in some storied postseason clashes and, like Dallas, have followings which extend well beyond their respective geographical areas. Some Cowboys fans would call the Packers and Steelers rivals, but Jones said he’s not bothered by those teams’ presence more than he would be by any others.
“If it can’t be us, we’re happy to have these two teams,” he said. “It’ll be a great game, which we’re thrilled about. It’ll be great for North Texas, and we hope this is a good enough experience that we get to host another one.”
At which point, naturally, the daydreams will begin anew.
