JERRY JONES SETTLES A PATERNITY LAWSUIT AND MIGHT WANT TO GO AWAY FOR GOOD
He hasn’t appeared in a Super Bowl since the last century, and as he nears 82, the Cowboys won’t contend this season — meaning, he should ponder retirement after a disturbing court case in Texarkana
Not to cast aspersions, but Jerry Jones could murder a presidential candidate and carry on as owner of the Dallas Cowboys. His franchise is worth about $10 billion, the most valuable team in a world that wanted a $150 million purchase price in 1989. He was known as an oil tycoon in the day.
Now he’s an octogenarian magnate who remains untouchable in the NFL sphere, despite his woes. Roger Goodell would prefer to play golf than know if Jones is the biological father of a 27-year-old woman, Alexandra Davis. She and her mother filed lawsuits against Jones, who filed a countersuit, and after those three met for lunch Tuesday in Texarkana, Texas, of all places, a settlement was announced.
The women went home. They were happy.
“I feel good,” Alexandra said.
“Everything got resolved,” said her mother, Cynthia, who had wept on the witness stand. “We’re very happy about it.”
Jones? He headed to California for training camp, which begins his 29th straight season without a trip to the Super Bowl. He is not happy.
“A very Jones thing to do,” said Davis’ attorney, Jay Gray. “He knows he’s the real father, but now he’s vindictive because his real family has been hurt.”
If it’s true Jones has paid more than $3 million to Alexandra since her childhood, as court records show, why is his wife, Eugenia, suddenly bothered when they’ve been married since 1963? Was Jerry not telling the truth? “I’m not going to get into details at all, but I have, always, had the proper perspective and respect for them that I should have,” Jones said of the Davises. “Unfortunately, we got into this, but I’m glad we got it behind us. I regret that it came to this, and I'm glad that it is resolved to everyone's satisfaction.”
The checkbook always works, doesn’t it?
In a league filled with owners who have found varying degrees of trouble — Robert Kraft, Jim Irsay, Steve Ross, Jimmy Haslam, Michael Bidwill, David Tepper and, behind us, Daniel Snyder — civil paternity is smirking pain for Jones. He needs to contend for a championship, as he turns 82 in October. It won’t happen this year.
He is stuck with a playoff-torn quarterback, Dak Prescott, who wants to be the NFL’s highest-paid player and might be eyeing Las Vegas. A top receiver, CeeDee Lamb, will stay out of camp until he receives a new deal. Micah Parsons is patient but will demand megabucks next year. And the coach? Mike McCarthy should have been fired after he was destroyed by Green Bay last January. The Cowboys haven’t been called “America’s Team” since the last century. They are intensely watched and dominate media shows, but the country doesn’t take pride in Jones or his operation.
Their fans are the most heartbroken, lifted to the sky by Jones’ cheerleading and then brought down by his season-ending moping. From AT&T Stadium to a $1.5-billion facility known as The Star, everything he offers is world-class. He is a mockery.
The schedule has him speaking Saturday in Oxnard. The rest of us will be watching the Olympics in Paris. We’ll see Jerry Jones in January, after an 8-9 season, when he fires another coach and hires … who really cares?
Maybe he will look at his birth certificate for a change. When nothing happened in his 60s and 70s, the 80s are looking uglier. He has a $250 million superyacht known as the Bravo Eugenia, which is named for his wife.
Try taking her on a very long trip.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.