I typically don’t have much to say about people who eat Sausage Egg McMuffins with extra salt and a glass of milk, but I’ll make a special exception for Dallas Cowboys dictator Jerry Jones.
When your net worth is teetering towards $9 billion, it’s safe to assume that the decisions that you make and the stances that you take are financially motivated. When Jones opened AT&T Stadium—an 80,000 seat, $1.3 billion behemoth—in 2009, it was to propel the Cowboys into the most lucrative team in the league by a wide margin. To that end, even though the Cowboys have remained perennial failures on the field for decades now, Jones could give less than a shit because the team is still padding his pockets.
“As you know, the Cowboys have not gone to the playoffs in several years,” Jones once told the Dallas Morning News. “We have not gone, yet we’re the most popular TV show there is on television. We lead all teams in TV ratings. We lead, 24 of the last top 25 shows were NFL games, and any time your Cowboys play they’re up there at the top and leading.”
And when “Jerruh” came out of his leathery neck to come for Colin Kaepernick and any other player who had the audacity to peacefully protest during the national anthem—including one on his own team—it was also to protect his profit margins.
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“We cannot in any way give the implication that we tolerate disrespecting the flag,” he famously declared in 2017. “We know that there is a serious debate in this country about those issues, but there is no question in my mind, that the [NFL] and the Dallas Cowboys are going to stand up for the flag.”
So pardon me if I’m a little leery about a notorious capitalist who runs his team with a “plantation mentality” now lending his support in favor of COVID-19 vaccinations. With new NFL protocols in place that could lead to the forfeiture of games and other penalties should unvaccinated players cause outbreaks among teammates and team personnel, Jones revealed himself to be an ardent supporter of vaccines during his weekly interview with 105.9 The Fan.
“Everyone has a right to make their own decisions regarding their health and their body,” he said. “I believe in that completely—until your decision as to yourself impacts negatively many others. Then the common good takes over. And I’m arm-waving here, but that has everything to do with the way I look at our team, the Cowboys, or the way I look at our society. We have got to check ‘I’ at the door and go forward with ‘we.’ Your Dallas Cowboys are doing that.”
Never in life have I previously considered Jones a source of logic and reason, but despite whatever ulterior motive he has for the Cowboys taking the vaccine—or the fact that greed is likely behind his decision to open AT&T Stadium to full capacity this season without requiring proof of vaccination—he’s still absolutely correct. So while his entire coaching staff and 93 percent of his roster have been vaccinated so far, which provides the Cowboys with a much higher chance to win (and generate income) should players remain available, it also contributes to giving the rest of us a chance to beat a pandemic that has already stolen so much.
This also feels eerily similar to the X-Men’s current Krakoa era, in which heroes and villains put their longstanding differences aside in order to ensure the survival of their species.
While I’m inclined to believe that Jones wouldn’t hold the same “one for all and all for one” views in regards to systemic racism and equality, at least he’s doing his part to quell COVID-19 in his home state—something Texas Gov. Greg Abbott clearly wants no parts of.
That counts for something, I guess.
