RS12
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2. Dallas Cowboys – Jerry Jones (Stephen Jones): Think that uproar over the height of the massive video screens at Cowboys Stadium and their potential for deflecting punts is stressing out Jones? Hold on while I let out a Texas-sized guffaw. It doesn’t take a marketing genius (a term that happens to apply to Jerry and his eldest son, Stephen, the team’s executive vice president and stadium point man) to realize that any criticism about the facility’s construction plan are more than offset by the abundant publicity resulting from the controversy. After building the most impressive sports facility on the continent, the Joneses deserve to have a little fun in the sun – depending upon whether the roof is open or closed. Lampoon Jerry Jones all you want, and try to write off his three Super Bowl championships as the product of Jimmy Johnson’s greatness, and you’ll drown in a sea of cliché and superficiality. These are the facts about Jones: Over the past two decades no owner has been bolder (beginning with the out-of-the-blue hiring of Johnson in 1989); no owner has done more to move the league from its de facto communism of the pre-salary-cap era to the more entrepreneurial present; nobody has been as willing to put his wealth, reputation and vision on the line in the pursuit of winning. That doesn’t mean Jones will always do things the way you (or I) insist he should. I’d love to see him hire a Dimitroff-type executive and trust him to run the personnel operation, and I wish he hadn’t have bit on the Roy Williams trade. But if I were a Cowboys fan, I’d get down on my knees and thank the football gods for sending Jerry and his family to North Texas, and none of you will ever convince me otherwise. Among his many recent accomplishments: Jones, as chairman of the NFL Network, joined forces with Goodell to settle a long-running dispute with Comcast after successfully demonstrating that customers would cancel their cable service if denied access to the channel. Said one rival owner: “You’ve got to give it up for Jerry. The stadium’s spectacular. Four words: Big vision, big testicles.”
New England
1. New England Patriots – Robert Kraft (Jonathan Kraft): I realize that this is getting kind of boring, what with Kraft and Jones continuing their chokehold on the top two spots in my rankings, but there’s no reason to put them anywhere else. Kraft runs the league’s smoothest operation, and if ever there was a testament to the health of the Patriots’ organization, it was the way New England persevered during a 2008 season that began with a brutal injury to the NFL’s best player. Many teams would have crumbled; the Pats, using a quarterback (Matt Cassel(notes)) who many analysts believed would be cut during training camp and who hadn’t started a game since high school, regrouped to finish 11-5, missing the playoffs on a tiebreaker despite defeating the eventual NFC champions by 40 points in December. Bill Belichick, the coach Kraft hired against the advice of virtually everyone (including an unsolicited party from the league office), obviously had a lot to do with that, but so did the foundation and stability created by Robert and his eldest son Jonathan, the franchise’s president and player-valuation whiz. On a league level the Krafts are deserved powerbrokers and staunch allies of Goodell, whose three-year stint as commissioner has been tremendously successful. Two years from now, if a lockout comes to pass, the people in charge of 31 franchises will be highly appreciative of their collaborative efforts.
New England
1. New England Patriots – Robert Kraft (Jonathan Kraft): I realize that this is getting kind of boring, what with Kraft and Jones continuing their chokehold on the top two spots in my rankings, but there’s no reason to put them anywhere else. Kraft runs the league’s smoothest operation, and if ever there was a testament to the health of the Patriots’ organization, it was the way New England persevered during a 2008 season that began with a brutal injury to the NFL’s best player. Many teams would have crumbled; the Pats, using a quarterback (Matt Cassel(notes)) who many analysts believed would be cut during training camp and who hadn’t started a game since high school, regrouped to finish 11-5, missing the playoffs on a tiebreaker despite defeating the eventual NFC champions by 40 points in December. Bill Belichick, the coach Kraft hired against the advice of virtually everyone (including an unsolicited party from the league office), obviously had a lot to do with that, but so did the foundation and stability created by Robert and his eldest son Jonathan, the franchise’s president and player-valuation whiz. On a league level the Krafts are deserved powerbrokers and staunch allies of Goodell, whose three-year stint as commissioner has been tremendously successful. Two years from now, if a lockout comes to pass, the people in charge of 31 franchises will be highly appreciative of their collaborative efforts.
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