Throughout 2024, Dallas felt like a city teetering between extremes.
There were the deep playoff runs by the Stars and Mavericks that had us discussing tandem victory parades before both teams’ seasons came to a halt in their respective conference finals. There were the Dallas HERO charter amendments that inspired a rare wave of unity among city leaders rallying the opposition, only for the electorate to unify in favor of two of the three measures.
Some things, though, skipped the teetering and nosedived straight into bad. Jerry Jones and the Cowboys were beyond redemption this year, earning the infamous team owner Texas Monthly’s Bum Steer dishonor. The award is given annually to mark the worst of our state — the worst people, the worst ideas and the worst moments that left us questioning whether we really want to identify ourselves as Texans.
And it goes without saying that this year nobody wanted to identify as a Cowboys fan.
If Jones’ rant about knowing where the sun is wasn’t embarrassing enough, there was the viral clip of Dak Prescott reacting to a devastating loss to the Houston Texans. Discerning lip-readers were able to make out the quarterback dejectedly stating, “We f—ing suck.”
Clearly, there's no debate about Jones' fitness for the statewide title, but the Observer contends that Dallas had several candidates of our own worthy of some scorn. Here are four people, groups or moments in Dallas that were irredeemably bad in 2024.
The Jake Paul – Mike Tyson Fight
Bad things happen at AT&T Stadium, it seems. With more than a year of hype behind it, the professional boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson had all eyes on North Texas. At first, the fight was uncomfortable to watch. Then, it was embarrassing.
Paul’s slow-motion stadium entrance set to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” (Get it? He’s been dreaming of this moment for all his life.) was gaudy and arrogant. Tyson’s deep-seated belief that his dominance transcended age was delusional.
The match between former YouTuber Paul, 27, and former heavyweight champion Tyson, 58, was originally meant to take place in July, but an ulcer flare-up forced Tyson to delay the match. The extra months only lent themselves to even more marketing for the event. Sixty-five million people tuned in to the livestream, Netflix reports, but the streaming service was clearly unprepared to host such a massive event.
In the hours-long lead-up to the fight, amateur camera work gave viewers a hearty look at Tyson’s bare rump, and broadcasters never seemed to find their footing when it came to calling the undercard fights. Relentless buffering pauses plagued viewers, inspiring a litany of frustrated hashtags to trend on X. For those with the strongest Wi-Fi who were able to avoid the buffer purgatory, it became clear by Round 2 that this was not a match between champions.
Jake Paul bows to Mike Tyson at the end of the match. #PaulTyson pic.twitter.com/FUQGZVyADQ
— Netflix (@netflix) November 16, 2024
It was a boxing competition between a fit 20-something with ungodly amounts of money and an out-of-his-depth old man trying to relive his glory days. We can only watch an old guy get beat up for so long. Apparently, other states agreed. Several declined to host the fight because of the age difference between Paul and Tyson, and Texas agreed to allow it only after the match was shortened to eight, two-minute rounds instead of 10 or 12 three-minute ones.
The entire fight — surrounded by millions and millions of dollars worth of spectacle — lasted less than 20 minutes. Arlington’s entertainment district is still plastered with posters of a steely-looking Paul — perhaps the only lasting evidence that the inconsequential fight ever occurred at all.
The Search for a City Manager
Dallas spent 10 months without a city manager — and for nine of them, no one seemed to care. When council members did start grumbling about who, exactly, is leading our city’s day-to-day functions, the process was revealed to be convoluted and opaque at best and mortifyingly flawed at worst.
Former city manager T.C. Broadnax announced his resignation on Feb. 21, and a slew of Dallas’ biggest wigs followed him south to Austin. Since February, Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert has been steering the ship while the search firm Baker Tilly looked for Dallas’ next leader. Baker Tilly’s approach to the hunt has been lackluster, some city council members believe.
In November the firm presented the council with four finalists for the role, but in a meeting earlier this month, council members were miffed that they were never shown the full stack of resumes for the job. When the entire list was released, Dallas Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Adam Bazaldua called it “embarrassing.” Baker Tilly then revealed that several top names were no longer interested in Dallas thanks to the passage of two Dallas HERO amendments that city leaders believe will complicate processes at City Hall.
As if the messy CEO search wasn’t bad enough, several council members attempted to circumvent the official process by calling a special meeting to interview candidates, including Tolbert. That meeting never achieved a quorum, further exposing the dysfunction haunting City Hall.
As Dallas enters 2025, council members have made it clear that finding a manager is a top priority. Why it wasn’t for the last 10 months is one question. How long this process will continue to take is another.
Charlotte Jones in America’s Sweethearts
A boatload of media has been produced about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders over the years, but few peeks into the world have been as intimate as Netflix’s documentary series America’s Sweethearts, which debuted earlier this year. The documentary revealed the good and the bad that comes with being a DCC, but the cheerleaders and directors Judy Trammell and Kelli Finglass ultimately were shown to be beautiful, focused, devoted advocates for the blue and white.
Charlotte Jones, on the other hand, did not win rave reviews. (She's Jerry's daughter. Two Jones’ on the Bum Steer list. Who could have seen that coming?)
There were the whispered “Bless her heart”s when a cheerleader dared to gain a pound or 2. Then there was the scene where Jones insisted a promising dancer be cut from the team days before their first show because of her short stature. In each episode, Jones came off as a mercurial, antifeminist bully leading an organization that claims to be about female empowerment.
Perhaps more indefensible, though, were Jones’ comments about cheerleaders’ pay. Although the salary of a DCC isn't public knowledge, we have some rough guesses. In America’s Sweethearts, former Cowboys cheerleader Kat Puryear stated she made less than a Chick-fil-A employee. HuffPost has reported the cheerleaders make $12.50 per hour and an additional $400 per game. The idea of full-time hours for part-time pay in professional cheerleading has drawn criticism, but Jones defended the choice in the documentary.
“They’re not paid a lot. But the facts are that they actually don’t come here for the money,” Jones insisted. “They come here for something that’s actually bigger than that to them.”
Financial experts estimate the Dallas Cowboys organization tops $1 billion in revenue each year. How 'bout you pay them girls, Charlotte Jones?
North Texas Higher Education
Few institutions garnered worse headlines this year than North Texas universities, specifically the University of North Texas and the University of Texas at Dallas.
At UTD, pro-Palestine protests led to tension between the university’s administration and the student newspaper staff. Between exorbitant prices for public records requests and the firing of the Mercury’s editor-in-chief, Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, UTD drew attention from First Amendment rights groups after the newspaper staff went on strike.
“UTD’s removal of Gutierrez and the denial of his appeal are antithetical to basic conceptions of a free student press and incongruous with the public university’s binding legal obligations to uphold Gutierrez’s and other students’ First Amendment rights,” said a letter to administrators from The Student Press Law Center and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
UTD’s treatment of its student journalists appears to echo complaints of a stifled academic environment that faculty reported to FIRE during a campus survey about free speech. Nearly half of the UT Dallas professors who answered the survey reported they have “recently toned down something they wrote for fear of causing controversy,” and more than half of the respondents reported that academic freedom is “not very” or “not at all” secure on UTD’s campus.
But it was UNT that really couldn’t catch a break. Controversies surrounding Texas’ DEI ban, a creep photographing female students in the gym and the Health Science Center’s selling of unclaimed bodies made for less-than-flattering headlines about the Mean Green. The last scandal was revealed by an NBC News exposé, gaining national attention and resulting in the program being terminated.
Still, for as much PR rehab UNT has to do in light of the Health Science Center fiasco, there is little to be done to heal the individuals whose loved ones' bodies were “frozen, cut into pieces and leased out across the country.”
