NFL Owners: The 5 worst in professional football

5. Jerry Jones, Dallas Cowboys

Jerry Jones might be the best businessman in the league — at least when it comes to professional football. His palace in Dallas is a marvel of architecture, one of the most impressive stadiums ever built. Cowboys merchandise is always amongst the best selling in the league. And Jones’ Cowboys are constantly talked about. You can’t turn on ESPN or read a national sports publication and not see talk about the Cowboys.

That’s all thanks to Jones.

And it’s made even more remarkable by the fact that the Cowboys have won one playoff game since 1996. Before you say anything, Dallas is 136-136 over that period. That is the definition of mediocrity. Other teams don’t get to go .500 over long periods of time and stay relevant the same way. Some of this is due to the “America’s team” branding that goes back to before Jones even owned the team. But giving credit where it’s due, few owners in the modern age do a better job of ensuring their brand gets as much recognition as it does than Jerry Jones.

The praise stops there though. Jones’ meddlesome ways have run off good coaches, sustained bad coaches and kept Dallas mediocre since their dynasty ended in the mid-90’s. The problem starts and ends with Jones’ ego. Just as Jones’ ego was a positive factor in the construction of Dallas’ stadium, it’s a detriment when it comes to personnel decisions and running the team. It was Jones’ ego that made him clash with Jimmy Johnson in 1993. Johnson was in control of personnel decisions and had already loaded the Cowboys with talent by the time Jones demanded a bigger say. The situation devolved so quickly that shortly after winning his second consecutive Super Bowl in 1994 Johnson was replaced as the Cowboys’ coach.

The team Johnson built carried another coach, Barry Switzer, to a third title and cemented the Cowboys’ dynasty, but things crumbled quickly after that. Switzer resigned a few years later, apologizing at the time for ruining the Cowboys (something he had help doing) and since then Dallas has been staggeringly mediocre. And at every turn, Jones has had a hand in it.

Remember Quincy Carter? There is not a more perfect example to serve as a microcosm of Jones’ entire tenure than the Quincy Carter pick. In 2001, Dallas was looking to replace Troy Aikman (something many fans will argue they still haven’t done), but the Cowboys had no first round pick because they had traded two firsts to Seattle for Joey Galloway the year before (Joey Galloway was a fine wide receiver, but going back, he was not worth two first round picks). Dallas then proceeded to reach with it’s first pick of the 2001 draft (which came in the second round, 53rd overall) and take Quincy Carter out of Georgia. Carter probably would have been around by the time Dallas picked in the third, maybe even the fourth round, but Jones loved the kid so they grabbed him at 53 — to the shock of pretty much every one.

Predictably, it didn’t work out.

That, by itself, would have been enough to cost another GM his job. But 13 years later Jones is still making personnel decisions in Dallas, the Cowboys are still mediocre and ESPN is still spending ten minutes every hour talking about them.