NFL History Question..

[Matts4313]

Hey, I know we have a lot of people who have been following/studying the Cowboys for a long time here. I have a question about Jerry Jones and his role in the current NFL landscape.

I heard/read a while back that JJ was responsible for developing the structure that the NFL uses today in terms of accounting. From my understanding, he was one of the people who pioneered the salary cap and rev sharing. Is that true or was he opposed to it?


Google has not been super nice to me when trying to figure this out; though that is probably user error. Does anyone want to give me a history lesson?

[muck4doo]

Originally Posted by Matts4313

Hey, I know we have a lot of people who have been following/studying the Cowboys for a long time here. I have a question about Jerry Jones and his role in the current NFL landscape.

I heard/read a while back that JJ was responsible for developing the structure that the NFL uses today in terms of accounting. From my understanding, he was one of the people who pioneered the salary cap and rev sharing. Is that true or was he opposed to it?


Google has not been super nice to me when trying to figure this out; though that is probably user error. Does anyone want to give me a history lesson?

I believe that would be Bill Walsh and Thurmon Thomas during their salad days with the Miami Dolphins. Andre Rison was a pretty bad influence on them.

[Shiloht88]

I don't recall that. As a matter of fact I think Jerry hates the idea of sharing revenue. The man is all about the dollar and looking like a football guy.

I could be wrong about the revenue sharing.

[jobberone]

You may be thinking about using corporate advertising and sole use of Cowboys' related merchandise sales. I think Jerry may have pioneered at least one of those.

[conner01]

revenue sharing was around way before jerry. jerry was a big part of the push for a salary cap and he did take tv contract negotiations to a much higher level. the tv thing was his biggest contribution, he was actually smart enough to figure out how much the networks were making off advertising before they began negotiations. rozzell in his day really brought in the tv money but jerry took it to a whole new level

[arglebargle]

Jerry came up with all sorts of alternative advertising and revenue streams. The NFL was all set to sue him over it, but then decided just to adopt most of his practices for all, iirc.

[bkight13]

Originally Posted by arglebargle

Jerry came up with all sorts of alternative advertising and revenue streams. The NFL was all set to sue him over it, but then decided just to adopt most of his practices for all, iirc.

I remember he signed Pepsi to be the official drink of Texas Stadium when the NFL had a deal with Coke. I think he did the same thing with Nike and American Express instead of Reebok and Visa. He wanted to keep more of the local revenue from being shared vs the league wide deals. His local radio rights dwarfed most markets and he wanted to keep them, plus at the time Dallas was responsible for a much larger percentage of the national merchandise sales. I'm not quite sure how they avoided litigation, but I think the language of the revenue sharing plan was re-worked during the next CBA and everyone made more money when forced to work harder for their local money instead of relying on the Cowboys of the league to carry the weight for them.