'Cheap Cowboys Coach'? Inside Jerry Jones' Real Reason For Silly Salary Stance

FRISCO - Jerry Jones’ estimated worth is $23 billion.

To you, me and 99.9 percent of the planet, that’s unfathomable wealth. To put it in perspective, the 84-year-old could spend $3 million per day - per day! - and not run out of money in his lifetime.

So, please, let’s stop the nonsense narratives. No, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys isn’t cash-strapped, and neither is he unwilling to pay a head coach a top salary because all he cares about is money.

There also isn’t an NFL salary cap on coaching salaries, so let’s take financial reasons out of the equation.

If you’ve spent any time with Jerry - some of us have been shadowing him since he arrived here from Arkansas in 1989 - you know his refusal to fire Brian Schottenheimer and hire an established star head coach like, say, Mike Tomlin, is nothing about money ...

And everything about power.

Jerry, after all, has paid his head coaches megabucks before.

After the Cowboys won Super Bowl XXVII in the 1992 season, he doubled Jimmy Johnson’s salary from $500,000 to $1 million. The raise vaulted Jimmy into the top five NFL coaching salaries in the company of Don Shula ($1.7 million), Joe Gibbs ($1.4), Bill Parcells ($1.2) and Dan Reeves ($1.0).

And after years toiling with the likes of coaches Chan Gailey and Dave Campo, Jerry in 2003 went out and hired the big-fish Parcells to the tune of $4.5 million per season. At the time, only Steve Spurrier ($5.0), Mike Holmgren ($4.5) and Mike Shanahan ($4.5) made as much.

In the wake of the failed Parcells experiment, Jerry has earned the reputation for going on the cheap for his head coaches.

To be accurate, just replace “cheap” with “weak.”

Jones is already in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and has three Super Bowl trophies. But to this day - and to his grave - it irks him that many Cowboys fans and NFL observers credit those championships to not him, but Jimmy.

Irrational stubbornness be damned, Jones desperately wants to win a championship - but he craves to do it his way. ... and to do it with a coach that he alone discovered and developed.

Hiring, say, Mike Tomlin, on the contrary, wouldn’t fit his desired model.

That's not because the former Pittsburgh Steelers coach would demand around $17 million per season; it's because he’s already won a Super Bowl.

"Cowboys coach Tomlin'' would become the face of the franchise and, if he led Dallas to a title, would get the credit.

The potential narrative that Jerry only won rings because of "Jimmy's roster'' is the blockage here. It is exactly keeps from hiring - and paying - a known commodity.

Which brings us to Schottenheimer, and this week’s comments by Jerry that there is “no correlation” between big contracts and huge success when it comes to NFL head coaches.

Said Jerry on his 105.3 The Fan radio show, “In the NFL, there is zero correlation between how much you pay a coach, or how many coaches you have, as to winning. There is no correlation. And that’s a random sample of years and all 32 teams involved. So, put that in your hopper and smoke it.”

Hogwash. We know it. Jerry knows it. (Besides, I thought you put it in your pipe and smoked it, no? A hopper?!)

The top five highest-paid coaches in the league this year - Andy Reid, John Harbaugh, Sean Payton, Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan - are a combined 25-11-1 and have six Super Bowl trophies on their mantle.

Now, it can be argued that they are highly-paid in the present because they won Super Bowls previously. But no matter how you make the numbers and the facts dance?

As, again, there is no salary cap on coaches, why not spend the most, as Jerry does on everything else he owns? Given that going cheap hasn't worked, why not try the other way?

After two of the most gut-wrenching losses in franchise history only five weeks apart, Schottenheimer and his paltry 3-5 record should be fired. But, in case you need reminding, "Jerry the Owner'' has over the years readily admitted that "Jerry the GM'' would be fired by any other organization for a 30-year Super Bowl drought.

"Jerry the GM'' is safe. As is Schottenheimer the milquetoast coach with the 10-14-1 record.

And why?

Because this isn’t any other NFL franchise. It is clearly Jerry’s Cowboys.

He owns a 357-foot yacht named after his wife - Bravo Eugenia - that is worth $250 million. The cost to fill it with gas: A cool $500,000.

Before you regurgitate more preposterous “Jerry doesn’t have the money” rubbish, ponder that. Or, I dunno, maybe even put it in your hopper and smoke it?