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http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/columnists/tim-cowlishaw/20140329-cowlishaw-20-years-after-jerry-jimmy-split-new-spin-on-why-johnson-left-cowboys.ece
One man sought peace. The other craved power. Since both ultimately achieved those goals, the 20th anniversary of the Jimmy Johnson-Jerry Jones breakup could be cause for celebration if not for that one sticking point.
In the discussion of great football teams, the Cowboys have become irrelevant in Jimmy’s absence.
And as much as he takes some measure of delight in Jones’ struggle to win without him, Johnson was in no mood to discuss what happened on March 29, 1994, when I called him in south Florida on Friday morning.
“What anniversary is this one?’’ he said, laughing. “They’re always having some kind of anniversaries down there ... I guess because they don’t go to Super Bowls anymore.’’
Shots. Fired.
Johnson talked about recent fishing trips with old pals. He talked about his new Hawker 800 XP that will whip him across the country this season for Fox NFL Sunday appearances in Los Angeles.
He did not want to talk about the Cowboys.
“Do you want to know how many times Jerry or Stephen have called me in 20 years for advice or to ask about a player? Zero,” said Johnson. “And yet they call [Larry] Lacewell.’’
Drops the mic.
People ask me if I think that, on those rare occasions that Jones and Johnson are thrust together, their laughs and smiles are genuine, if they are privately friends who just happen to enjoy the public sparring. I say I believe the opposite to be true.
Jones remains tormented by the fact that Johnson gets not just all the credit for those two Super Bowls, but the third one as well — two years after he left Valley Ranch with Jones’ $2 million check in his pocket. Johnson’s feelings of disrespect are not even thinly disguised.
Cowboys fans maintain their team would have been the only franchise to win three straight Super Bowls had Johnson stayed for the 1994 season. My guess is that players and Johnson would have been at each other’s throats by midseason (they were nearly ready to mutiny for some of his tirades late in ’93). I also think the presumption of a third Dallas victory dismisses how good those 49ers were that season.
Johnson is the most unreflective man I have ever met, so if you’re wondering if he has spent 15 minutes pondering this topic, bet the under.
When he came to Dallas, he didn’t worry about replacing Tom Landry. When he moved on to Miami, filling Don Shula’s shoes was the least of his concerns. When Johnson takes on a task, he plows straight ahead and casts aside all thoughts and people he finds irrelevant. That includes a wife when he came to Dallas.
Jones helped him out of that situation, too, giving him $1 million to pass on to his ex-wife in settlement. It has rarely if ever been discussed how that contributed to Johnson’s departure here. Five years and two Super Bowl rings into his time in Dallas, Johnson had become underpaid as a head coach at $1 million per season.
What the public didn’t know was that Jones was collecting all the money from Johnson’s weekly coach’s show and other ancillary revenue because of that original $1 million divorce payment.
People love to beat up on Jones for letting Johnson get away. There’s no question his determination to start meddling in football affairs (Jones didn’t do that in the first few years, no matter what he insists) pushed Johnson toward the door.
But Johnson never coached anywhere more than five years. He is a man who grows bored quickly. And the one thing neither Jones nor Johnson could control was the toll exacted by the team’s success.
As Cowboys beat writer in 1992 and 1993, I would regularly go out with Johnson for a few beverages and off-the-record talks after he taped his TV show on Thursday nights at the Channel 4 studio. Near the end of the ’92 season, when the team was blowing through the NFC East and seemed headed — at the very least — for an NFC Championship showdown with the 49ers, Johnson was unusually despondent.
When I pressed him on it, he explained that he knew this was all about to end. He said when he jogged that day with Dave Wannstedt and Tony Wise, he realized this was one of the last times they would be together after years at Oklahoma State, the University of Miami and the Cowboys. Wannstedt would get a head coaching job out of this and he would take Wise with him, and Johnson said he knew Norv Turner would not be far behind.
The prospect of winning a Super Bowl moved him less than the understanding that his few close friends in life would be leaving him.
If Johnson had to build a new staff, he didn’t want to do it in Dallas where anything short of Super Bowl victory would hang in the air like defeat. He wanted a fresh start with the expansion team in Jacksonville, which was as close as he could get to his beloved south Florida at the time. But while he had riled his owner by talking about the Jacksonville job days before a big regular-season finale in New York (Jones had the right to be ticked off over that), Johnson could not manipulate his way out of his contract to get to the Jaguars.
I asked Johnson about the draft a few days before the fateful owners’ meetings in Orlando, where it would all start to unravel after Jones’ “500 coaches could win a Super Bowl here’’ comment. This was six weeks after the Super Bowl. Johnson said he hadn’t looked at tape on a single player.
This wasn’t a coach thinking about history or legacies. This was a man in search of the nearest fire escape.
In the end, Jones didn’t fire Johnson and he didn’t push him out the door. He merely cracked it open and Jimmy — as is his nature — shoved his way on out, into the land of palm trees and sand, not looking back then or now.
One man sought peace. The other craved power. Since both ultimately achieved those goals, the 20th anniversary of the Jimmy Johnson-Jerry Jones breakup could be cause for celebration if not for that one sticking point.
In the discussion of great football teams, the Cowboys have become irrelevant in Jimmy’s absence.
And as much as he takes some measure of delight in Jones’ struggle to win without him, Johnson was in no mood to discuss what happened on March 29, 1994, when I called him in south Florida on Friday morning.
“What anniversary is this one?’’ he said, laughing. “They’re always having some kind of anniversaries down there ... I guess because they don’t go to Super Bowls anymore.’’
Shots. Fired.
Johnson talked about recent fishing trips with old pals. He talked about his new Hawker 800 XP that will whip him across the country this season for Fox NFL Sunday appearances in Los Angeles.
He did not want to talk about the Cowboys.
“Do you want to know how many times Jerry or Stephen have called me in 20 years for advice or to ask about a player? Zero,” said Johnson. “And yet they call [Larry] Lacewell.’’
Drops the mic.
People ask me if I think that, on those rare occasions that Jones and Johnson are thrust together, their laughs and smiles are genuine, if they are privately friends who just happen to enjoy the public sparring. I say I believe the opposite to be true.
Jones remains tormented by the fact that Johnson gets not just all the credit for those two Super Bowls, but the third one as well — two years after he left Valley Ranch with Jones’ $2 million check in his pocket. Johnson’s feelings of disrespect are not even thinly disguised.
Cowboys fans maintain their team would have been the only franchise to win three straight Super Bowls had Johnson stayed for the 1994 season. My guess is that players and Johnson would have been at each other’s throats by midseason (they were nearly ready to mutiny for some of his tirades late in ’93). I also think the presumption of a third Dallas victory dismisses how good those 49ers were that season.
Johnson is the most unreflective man I have ever met, so if you’re wondering if he has spent 15 minutes pondering this topic, bet the under.
When he came to Dallas, he didn’t worry about replacing Tom Landry. When he moved on to Miami, filling Don Shula’s shoes was the least of his concerns. When Johnson takes on a task, he plows straight ahead and casts aside all thoughts and people he finds irrelevant. That includes a wife when he came to Dallas.
Jones helped him out of that situation, too, giving him $1 million to pass on to his ex-wife in settlement. It has rarely if ever been discussed how that contributed to Johnson’s departure here. Five years and two Super Bowl rings into his time in Dallas, Johnson had become underpaid as a head coach at $1 million per season.
What the public didn’t know was that Jones was collecting all the money from Johnson’s weekly coach’s show and other ancillary revenue because of that original $1 million divorce payment.
People love to beat up on Jones for letting Johnson get away. There’s no question his determination to start meddling in football affairs (Jones didn’t do that in the first few years, no matter what he insists) pushed Johnson toward the door.
But Johnson never coached anywhere more than five years. He is a man who grows bored quickly. And the one thing neither Jones nor Johnson could control was the toll exacted by the team’s success.
As Cowboys beat writer in 1992 and 1993, I would regularly go out with Johnson for a few beverages and off-the-record talks after he taped his TV show on Thursday nights at the Channel 4 studio. Near the end of the ’92 season, when the team was blowing through the NFC East and seemed headed — at the very least — for an NFC Championship showdown with the 49ers, Johnson was unusually despondent.
When I pressed him on it, he explained that he knew this was all about to end. He said when he jogged that day with Dave Wannstedt and Tony Wise, he realized this was one of the last times they would be together after years at Oklahoma State, the University of Miami and the Cowboys. Wannstedt would get a head coaching job out of this and he would take Wise with him, and Johnson said he knew Norv Turner would not be far behind.
The prospect of winning a Super Bowl moved him less than the understanding that his few close friends in life would be leaving him.
If Johnson had to build a new staff, he didn’t want to do it in Dallas where anything short of Super Bowl victory would hang in the air like defeat. He wanted a fresh start with the expansion team in Jacksonville, which was as close as he could get to his beloved south Florida at the time. But while he had riled his owner by talking about the Jacksonville job days before a big regular-season finale in New York (Jones had the right to be ticked off over that), Johnson could not manipulate his way out of his contract to get to the Jaguars.
I asked Johnson about the draft a few days before the fateful owners’ meetings in Orlando, where it would all start to unravel after Jones’ “500 coaches could win a Super Bowl here’’ comment. This was six weeks after the Super Bowl. Johnson said he hadn’t looked at tape on a single player.
This wasn’t a coach thinking about history or legacies. This was a man in search of the nearest fire escape.
In the end, Jones didn’t fire Johnson and he didn’t push him out the door. He merely cracked it open and Jimmy — as is his nature — shoved his way on out, into the land of palm trees and sand, not looking back then or now.
