In the opening moments of Netflix’s America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys, Jerry Jones recounts the moment he turned a $100 million profit on a single oil well. It was the moment, as he says, that he knew he was going to buy the Dallas Cowboys, thus launching nearly four decades of outsized sports and pop culture influence.
The series, which premiered on Netflix this week, specifically follows the 1990s Cowboys teams from the perspective of Jones’ ownership. It features recurring interviews from a hall of fame cast of Cowboys legends, including Troy Aikman, Deion Sanders, Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer and Emmett Smith, plus appearances from George W. Bush, Skip Bayless and Jones’ children.
It was directed by brothers Chapman and Macain Way, who previously produced the Untold sports documentary series for Netflix. Their brother, Brocker Way, did the score for America's Team, gliding in between Western-inspired needle drops of Ennio Morricone's The Ecstasy of Gold and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard's Eyes Like The Sky.
Those jukebox musical-esque sequences give way to a history book of the contemporary Dallas Cowboys, which is about as rich a text as a sports story can get. Episode one primarily followed the contentious first few months of Jones' reign. Here are the four moments that stuck most stuck out to us.
The Gambler
What's the most you've ever lost on a coin toss? If you've seen No Country for Old Men, you'd know the answer could sometimes be your life. When it comes to Jerry Jones, the answer, as far as we know, is $300,000.Jones offered $150 million for the Cowboys to former owner Harvey Roberts "Bum" Bright, who haggled with Jones for an extra $300,000. The two men couldn't agree on the number, and Bright offered a coin flip for it. Jones lost, but still wound up with the team, of course.
"I really got fucked," Jones says of the deal in the documentary, with a sly smile.
Jerry's Larger-than-Life Vision
Jones was only 46 when he bought the Cowboys from Bright, who sold the team after several mediocre seasons in a row, including the especially grim 3-13 season that preceded the sale. Upon taking over, Jones installed a brash new regime, one just as focused on dominating the headlines as it was on dominating other teams.“We weren't gonna be the ’70s Cowboys,” Jones says in the documentary. “I had a different vision. How about glitz and glamour? Big city Cowboys.”
Hearing that straight from the horse's mouth is surreal, especially after decades of pop culture iconography, all the way down to the cheerleaders and the stars on the helmets. Later, Jones says, "I think it could be this soap opera 365 days a year." And boy was he right.
Firing Tom Landry
Days after purchasing the team, Jones was taking heat in the national and local news spheres. He was spotted at dinner with then-University of Miami coach Jimmy Johnson, before holding a press conference to announce the firing of Cowboys coach Tom Landry and the ultimate hiring of Johnson. Landry, a legend in the Cowboys' journey in becoming "America's Team," had been with the team for nearly 30 years.The press conference later became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre," and the documentary shows a great deal of footage following the immediate fallout. Fans threatened to no longer support the team after Landry's firing, people called the Cowboys' front office thousands of times and Jones received death threats. One reporter says Jones will "always be known as the man who fired Tom Landry."
Not long after, Jones installed himself as general manager and president of the team, in a fully Machiavellian takeover that still persists to this day.
Aikman the Savior
At the end of episode one, Jones drafts UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman with the first pick of the 1989 draft. To Cowboys faithful, he's hailed as the savior of the franchise, whether it was to be immediately or in the future. The latter proved to be true. No spoilers, but Jones and Aikman's first full season in 1989 went horribly, earning a 1-15 record and the further chagrin of fans for trading away Herschel Walker.He'd eventually fulfill expectations, though. The team would go on to win three Super Bowls from 1992-95, with Aikman, Michael Irvin, and Johnson at the helm, as covered in the following seven episodes.
America's Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys is streaming on Netflix.
