Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss a couple of things that stood out in the Dallas Cowboys documentary on Netflix. America's the Gambler and his Cowboys.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keats, and joining me today is a man who on any given Sunday can make magic happen on a podcast. Tuna Yoga and Lana Tunde. Are you ready to show them how you fight for those inches?
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Of course, man. Let's go.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: All right. All right. Now before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and like the show on YouTube or your podcast platform, doing so really helps the show out. We're recording on August 26, 2025. And last week, Netflix released a new documentary focused on the NFL's Dallas Cowboys and their dynastic run in the mid-1990s and the cast of characters that really defined the organization at that time. Now this era of Dallas Cowboys football was known at the time and since then to be a wild and compelling like, I mean, and this is talking about, this is the team that won championships and they're known to be even more compelling off the field than on the field, you know, so much so that there's already been a New York Times best selling book written about the 90s Cowboys by author Jeff Pearlman. And the book was called Boys Will Be Boys. So like, there's some juicy stuff when you want to look closely at the 90s Dallas Cowboys for a football fan and really for anyone beyond a football fan. And I would say that the documentary did a solid job of kind of taking us through the broad strokes of the arc of the franchise at that time. So to get us started, Tunde, what storyline in this eight part documentary, America's Team, the gambler and his Cowboys really hit you the hardest or was most interesting to you?
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say, man, the first of all, I'm not an avid football fan and regular watcher, so to me this was great because there was a lot of information and stories that I just didn't know about.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: So I guess kind of pull the curtain back a little bit. And you were the one telling me that I should watch this and, and we got, we should do a show on it. And I was, I was a foot, I was avid football fan at that time in the 90s. I'm less so now. You know, I still follow it but, you know, less so than like at that time. I was every week watching everything and so forth. So it was interesting to me, you coming to me as a, as a non football guy. Like, yo, man, we got to watch this. We got to do this conversation.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Because in that period, NBA was my main thing. So I could tell you everything about the NBA in the 90s, but football, NFL, I can't. So that was to me a very enlightening and interesting.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: There's a lot of, A lot of.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Things I learned about not only the team of the Cowboys and the people that played it, but more of the, the essence, like you said, what was going on back then on and off the field. So I would say for me, man, you know, and I appreciate the question because in preparing for today, I thought about it and really it's Jerry Jones himself that really stuck out to me as, I mean, clearly he was the main character of the show in that way, but.
But I think his story just kind of the modern American arc.
I feel like his story is very in line with that. Born in 1942, which is when we had already entered the Second World War. So kind of that was a very important period forming a modern American culture.
In fact, he was in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the high school that was at the center of integration battles in the 1950s, graduating college in 1965 during the height of kind of that era of cultural change between Vietnam, civil rights, feminism, all that. And then really his, his foray as an adult into take being a risk taker, a very American kind of way of, you know, him getting into oil, the potential chances for boom or bust, him taking a huge loan to buy the Cowboys, that could have gone the other way and his family would have been starving, but it didn't. And he, and he kind of, not only did he hit an oil well, but he hit another in the business on the sports side with the franchise, he hit something as well. So, you know, and then, and then taking it all out to the interpersonal stuff that I know we'll talk about. So for me, just to. Just to finish a bit succinctly here, Jerry Jones really stood out to me.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: That was.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: And yeah, for more than just him being the main kind of character, it.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Was kind of, yeah, I was going.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: To say his journey.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: I would agree with you that he has a story, you know, like he has a story. And I would say that the documentary, you know, like the thing actually that stood out to me in the documentary was, hey, there's a lot of Jerry Jones here. And then I've seen commentary and I like, yeah, this is really a Jerry Jones documentary. And because there's a lot about the Cowboys, you know, that you could talk about. That wasn't in there, you know, even, you know, in this era to some. And then also the history of the Cowboys. Why are the Cowboys, America's team? That was not really touched on, you know, in the documentary and so forth, just as far as picking it up. So it was really centered around Jerry Jones, which you can tell from the subtitle, it's called the Gambler and His Cowboys. You know, so it's like, yeah, this is about Jerry Jones. But they did incorporate, you know, like, they didn't hide all the warts, so to speak, you know, and in fact, the warts are a lot. Where a lot of that compelling stuff is. I would say the thing that, for me, that was really very interesting to see and to see in a documentary because at the time, you know, I was aware of this. But you don't get to see it from the same perspective when you're seeing the kind of the news stories, you know, day by day or whatever is just that, like the role that ego played in, you know, this, like, as a part of the story. And it's a spoiler alert. You know, we're going to talk about, we're not going to go through everything that happened. It's eight episodes. But one of the things that, that defined the era was they, when. When Jones bought the team and they were, they, they. They went to the bottom, you know, they were at the bottom of the league. Shortly thereafter, they hired a new coach, Jimmie Johnson, you know, who was coming from University of Miami, which was a very flamboyant and. But the championship quality. But, you know, they won a lot and they let you know about it and you know, they were trying to bring in a different type of culture with the Cowboys and so forth, get out, get rid of the old kind of energy. And it succeeded, you know, like Johnson and you know, like as the coach, as, you know, the head personnel guy. And then Jones kind of being there also, they went from the bottom to the top, you know, and with that success, they immediately imploded, so to speak. Like, Johnson and Jones be fighting over who's who did this, who's. Who was the one that should get credit for this. And so we hear about things like that, you know, like, okay, yeah, yeah, once you have success, I mean, we see like, I think of like the music business and, you know, bands have success and then, you know, the people that, you know, kind of drove the success start looking at each other like, man, this is my show, not your show. And so it was, it kind of had that Kind of a feel to it and to see it again play out in the documentary and you're hearing from both of the guys, and then you're seeing, you know, just other people talking about, you know, that dynamic was very interesting to me because it's such an. A human thing. Like, again, like, you can see that in. In bands, you can see that in companies, you know, just that, hey, we took it from the bottom to the top, and then now I hate you, and in fact, you're fired. And all this, like, yo, wow. You know, so that to me was very interesting, you know, like, to. To see that. I knew it was coming, you know, I knew that, you know, they. They left on bad terms and, you know, like, there was a fight for credit. But to hear him talk about it and to hear him talk about it so much later, too, because they both didn't seem to have the level of animosity now, talking about it as if they would have talked about it 10 years ago or 15 years ago.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's a very interesting observation. So let's. Let's. Let's kind of tease that out a bit, because I think you're right. That gives me a different perspective to my initial intro. I would say it adds to the perspective that that's also what I loved about this documentary series is not only, like, Jerry Jones, like I mentioned, represents a lot of the modern American of arc of time and history and culture.
This, the entire documentary, as you mentioned, does a great job. If you watch it kind of with this lens that we're talking about, just showing not only, I would say, the human part of, like you're saying, ego and conflict and who gets credit for things and all that, but it's also in the backdrop of a very, I would almost say, unique and distinct environment of alpha males, but without necessarily the constraints of a system like, that's very hierarchical, like the military.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Because I'm thinking, or like a corporate. Big corporate structure or existing corporate structure. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Exactly. So. So, like, because I'm thinking, like, okay, if I'm a general and I'm leading guys in the Delta Force, in the Navy seal, like, that's. That's a group of alpha males and there's a hierarchy and all that, but that's a very structured situation. And like you said, corporate America, same thing. But a football team is very interesting because, you know, at least at the beginning, now might be different, but at the beginning, the cash cow for Jerry Jones was the oil well, you know, that The. Like you said, the Cowboys was something he desired and he loved. But it was a speculation.
It was speculative.
He didn't know that it would be worth what it's worth today.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Well, yeah, he's out there a little differently at that time. If you go, you know, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, even to the 90s, professional sports teams were not seen as ways to make money. They were seen as though they were like luxury purchases. Like, hey, you could buy a boat or you could buy the pro sports team in town and you can have that to play with. Or, you know, you can. You can get into any restaurant, and so you're a big, big deal in town, but it's not like, oh, yeah, you know, this is. This is driving revenue for me. It wasn't seen as that until more recently, you know, with the way.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Let's definitely revisit that, because I know we want to talk about some of the other, you know, the impacts of the NFL and all that now in today's era, but I'm just thinking on this theme of the ego, because think about what Jimmy Jones, Sorry, Jerry Jones takes a risk at taking his personal capital and buying the team and all that, but unlike we're saying, like, about the military and even some examples of corporate America, he's got to attract talent, and that means money. So he's also paying people millions of dollars. And they have their own egos. Right. Jimmie Johnson, like you said, was the top college coach winning championships. Then you got players who themselves were the top players. So you've got all this hierarchy of male egos. And how do you keep that all within a kind of a system to achieve a shared goal? And that's why I agree with you. Like, one of the things that stuck out that, you know, just from my notes and mention is that one of the. I think the first Christmas party that Jimmy Johnson threw for the team, no player showed up because that's how much they disliked at the time, his style of coaching.
Before they started winning. Yeah.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: This is before they say.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: And then they end up driving them.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Really hard and it wasn't paying off yet. Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: So that's all I'm saying is that.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: That's.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: To me, just hand it back. We keep going. But the it. I feel like the documentary did a good job of showing that dynamic between this kind of interpersonal plays between everybody. I think that was well done.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. Like, it didn't hide from that stuff, and rightfully so, because that's the most interesting stuff, like seeing it. For kind of the general arc of the football would not have been as interesting, you know, like.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: But that's, to me, why it was so interesting, actually, as a novel.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Like I said, you were over here telling me, domin, you gotta watch. You gotta watch. I'm like, look, man, what are you talking about? I know what happened, you know. But I would say yes, seeing the interpersonal stuff was worth it. I mean. And honestly, the next thing I wanted to get to actually was whether there were individuals in the documentary that was particularly notable to you or their stories or anything like that. And for me, I mean, the. I was a fan of Michael Irvin at the time, you know, like, I was playing, you know, high school football at the time, and I was a receiver. And it's like, oh, yeah, Michael Irvin's the man. Yadda, yadda. Yeah. And he's well known, you know, as. As, like the. At that time. And then, like, he's a wild guy. You know, this is the guy who embodied work hard and play hard. You know, work harder than everybody else and play harder than everybody else. And I think that came through in the documentary, like, to the extent that it was like, yeah, that was Michael Irvin. And he's very honest even to this day, like, he's being interviewed. He's very honest about, you know, his. What he may call shortcomings now, but at the time, it was just, you know, him like the wildest party guy out there. And, you know, like. So to me, the story, like, his story in within the documentary, even though I knew broad strokes of it in terms of, like, the criminal issues or the drug issues or the girl issues and stuff like that, seeing it and seeing him talk about it and seeing that stuff unfold and in the documentary was. Was very interesting still. I mean, because I guess that stuff is just. It's just compelling stuff to see this guy who is at the top of his profession and works harder than anybody else. So, like, one of the things nobody could ever question about this dude was how hard he's working. He's working harder than everybody. But then once the game is over, this dude is partying harder than everybody else, too. I mean, that. That just. So what about yourself? You know, like, was there any other than Jones, you know, like, characters, let's say, on Irvin.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: That's because Michael Irvin was a great. Because I liked. He made a quote, which I won't verbatim get it right. But it was something to the effect of, like, that he. I don't know the quote exactly, but he was like that, basically. He's like that all the time. That's what he said about himself.
Younger, hard. Yeah, that's what I mean. At least when he was younger, he looked pretty calm now in the interviews when he's older. But I'm just saying, like, his point was saying that the reason why he played like that is because that's who he was inside. And I felt like that's another example of kind of the dual edge nature of personalities. You know, what makes you successful in one area can be a detriment in other areas. And we see that a lot with, you know, not only people we see on tv, but even our personal life. We can all maybe point to a friend or family member who's very talented, maybe gifted in dealing with people or talking a certain way, but maybe talking too much or dealing with that in other parts of their life gets them in trouble at certain times, too. So that's what I found interesting about someone like him. Michael Irvin, I would say the Jerry Jones and Jimmie Johnson relationship from the whole arc was, to me, very interesting and special.
The fact that they were college roommates on the same football team in Arkansas. I didn't know that. You know, just again. But then to see that they both lived long enough, and this is a spoiler to someone who hasn't watched it and doesn't know the story.
They both lived long enough to make amends. And I thought about it because I was thinking, like, God forbid, what if one of them had cancer 20 years ago or something, you know, and just passed away and they didn't have a chance to, you know, mend that fence between each other as human beings. And it looked very special in the last episode when. When. When they did that. So to me, that stuck out a lot. And then the last, I'll say is the coach that replaced Johnson. His name was Barry. I can't remember Switzer. The story about his mom, when she committed suicide, him having to carry her to her bed and all that. I felt like, man, that's interesting when you go through something like that at a young age. And maybe that's why, the way he was with the players, because the players discussed him and Johnson in their contrast of coaching. But I like the way the documentary showed the love that the players had for both of them. And Irvin had a different ways.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: In different ways.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Yeah, because Irvin said, jimmy will ride you.
Barry will trust you. And it's just because I've been playing basketball. I played for different coaches like that too. And it's. Yeah, some they're different, but they can bring. Both styles can bring something good out of, you know.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Well, and what's interesting about that also is just kind of the order of it as well. Like the guy who molded everything was Johnson. The guy who rode everybody and then after everybody's kind of molded, they won twice. You know, the guy who kind of. And to, to be fair, Switzer was and had been retired. You know, like supposedly in the 70s and 80s he was a rider too, you know, but he kind of had mellowed out to a degree. He was out of coaching, wasn't looking to get back in when he got hired. And you know, like, interestingly enough, you know, like in this. We won't go into this, but he was kind of the first of. The Cowboys haven't had this level of success since the mid-90s. And the part of the. What a lot of people say is that Jerry Jones, after the Jimmy Johnson experience, when Jimmy Johnson was saying, hey, I did this and Jerry Jones was like, hey, this is my team, he wouldn't hire another coach that would claim, say, hey, this is my thing. He hired coaches that would subordinate themselves to him more. So, so Barry Switzer might have been the first of that. They got one more championship out of it. And then since then, you know, the Cowboys haven't done anything. The other thing I'll mention about Irvin, I do want to keep us moving though, was he. His example though was a different one of ego in the sense that while we talked about the hard charging part, you know, and professionally and personally, he also was an alpha amongst alphas in the sense that he wasn't intimidated by other big time talents, big time personalities. One of the things that was very interesting was the, the Cowboys during, for that last super bowl, they went out and signed Deion Sanders, who one of the most talented athletes of all time and also one of the most talk the guys who will tell you that he's the most talented out there. You know, in fact, in the documentary he's like, yeah, I was it like that's, that's, that's his quote. And so, but, and so like when, when they're thinking about doing this, they're like, well, what's Irvin going to think? Irvin's, you know, our. Irvin's our leader, you know, one of our leaders. And he's a, you know, everybody walk around like, hey, you know, I'm the man type of thing. Walking around, how's he gonna Feel about if we bring Deion in, because Deion takes a backseat to no one, you know, and so. But Deion and Irvin had this mutual respect. Irvin's like, hey, if we can get Dion, bring him in, you know, like that type of thing. So he. He. His approach, his mindset was one of not intimidated, being intimidated by having somebody else, because Dion's gonna come in and beat Deion and say, hey, this is all about me. Irvin was just saying, hey, this is all about me. But those guys both were so driven as far as the ultimate success that they were cool with having each other right there. Whereas, again, the Johnson, the Jimmie Johnson and Jerry Jones example doesn't illustrate that same kind of mentality. They're not both, like, to them, the credit and the. The. The. The. The kind of acknowledgement was on par with the success or at minimum, thinking they. They took it more for granted that they could have it.
And, oh, I can just. I can just hire. Jerry Jones's quote was, I can hire. There's 500 coaches that could win with the team that we have here. You know, Jimmy Johnson was like, well, I put that team together, and then, no, 500 couldn't. So the dynamic that they touched on with Irvin and Sanders, Deion Sanders, you know, like, that those guys were cool having each other right there, even though in another.
Different personalities, a people of that talent and that, you know, kind of assertiveness, Mike conflict, you know. Yeah.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Now the last thing, and then I know we want to keep it moving, I'll say is Deion Sanders. He said something and it didn't. It wasn't, I think, a big standout line in the. In the documentary. But it hit me because I appreciated it, especially from him, because he is a type of athlete that I think is a throwback to, I think, since Muhammad Ali. And every generation since, we've had some athletes that have been seen as a little bit more flashy, louder in their mouth, all that kind of stuff.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: And sometimes, like. But there's a key piece of that Nobody can doubt their talent or their work ethic or. Yeah, like, they are at the top and they will tell where I'm going.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: So that. That's so. But we look at that as, you know, that's a caricature. It's a. It's a. You know, again, American entertainment, you know, loves it. Right. It's from Barnum and Bailey and that stuff back in. And that's those times we like that kind of entertainment.
But he said something very specific. Which was that he studied and researched more than anyone else. And in terms of film, game film and the actual game. And I thought, yeah, that's something. We don't actually give a lot of these, like you're saying the greatest athletes a lot of credit for.
We say that they have this natural prowess and natural this and that, which is true in a certain thing. But the reason why not everybody gets to their point is also the intelligence side. I mean, if you look at whether Deion Sanders, Michael Jordan, whoever is at the top, you know, Tiger woods, they are very intelligent and they are students of what they do. And I think that was something I appreciated that Barry Sanders said. It was. Wasn't just that I was born fast. He was like, I also am fat, but I study. Like, I. It's a.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Well, let me. Because I think for another example, a more contemporary example is LeBron James. And people talk about, like, his contemporaries, you know, talk about how they. That's. He's like a computer brain in terms of understanding what's going on and studying and, hey, here's what's about to happen, and so forth. And yeah, I think that a lot of times that's more about us than them, though, because a lot of times we want to feel. We. People want to feel like they are there not because of hard work, but because just some natural ability that we divine. But what we. What a lot of people. It's not why anybody couldn't get there. It's. There are a lot of supreme. Not a lot, but there are a number of supremely talented people, but only a few make it to the very top. And. And that's what separates it out. The guys who were supremely talented, just as talented as Jordan or just as talented as. As LeBron or whatever like that. That or football from Dion, just as talented as Dion, who didn't have the focus, didn't have the discipline, didn't have the intelligence. All that stuff, those guys we just don't hear about, even though they were just as talented. So it's not that anybody could have got there, but the people with that talent, there's still a separator. And. And Dion had one of, you know, Dion was one of those guys to separate. Irvin was one of those guys separated. His work ethic amongst the talented people was, you know, a 99 percenter, you know, like, so he was able to take the talent. And then other people might have had that talent too, but he got more out of it because of that work ethic. So the last thing I want to talk to you about.
Both explicit and implicit in the documentary is that The Cowboys are NFL's most popular team, you know, America's team or whatever. And what we also know, as far as NFL entertainment properties go, like right now in the modern era, the NFL is by far the most popular thing we have going in entertainment. And I say entertainment because again, television, you know, going to a show or which is a game or whatever, like, it may be a competitive based thing, but it is an entertainment property. I mean, in 2024, the top 11 program telecasts based on viewership are all NFL games. And it's like 15 of the top 20. Like, so what people are watching on TV, you know, the top 11 telecasts or NFL games. So. And that's a year with the Olympics. You know, like it's, it's. The NFL is a behemoth from an entertainment standpoint. So what do you make of, you know, we see the soap opera of the Dallas Cowboys, but beyond that, like, what do you make of. Or do you think there's anything to. Is it the soap opera aspect or what do you think that makes, you know, Dallas Cowboys the top thing, top NFL team, with the NFL being the top entertainment thing, which would put Dallas Cowboys as kind of probably the most popular thing out there, you know, and that kind of thing. What do you think of that?
[00:22:45] Speaker B: And maybe the most valuable sports team out there.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Well, definitely the most valuable.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: So there's a lot, I'm sure there's a lot to unpack that we don't even have time.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: Yeah, you got to pick and choose. This is.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. Because this is like, to me, as much as I'm a basketball guy, first I got to acknowledge that football is America's game in many ways. I mean, there's an article I know we'll have in the show notes describing the similarity between football and how America conquered the frontier. So I mean, and that's, again, that's a whole different discussion. But it's very interesting from a cultural standpoint of what football can represent to a lot of Americans. I think though that if we look in the last couple decades, like specifically this alludes back and get your thoughts on the book show we did about a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. I think that football and television go well together for many reasons. And I also think that you had.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Said something to me about that as far as how football on television.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, so we had a private conversation that. And I've said this for years now, that football is the Only professional sport that I like to watch on television rather than go to a game. Like, I mean, we live in South Florida for listeners and viewers. So, you know, Miami Heat is the NBA team. I'd rather go to a Heat game than watch it on tv.
The Florida Marlins are a baseball team and the Florida Panthers are a hockey team. I've been to all those kind of games and to me it's more enjoyable being in the stadium, watching it live, hearing its cheers and all that than it is.
But football, I find I like being at home on my couch with a big screen. And it's. The sport is so much easier to kind of follow and understand when you're watching from tv.
And so to me, that's what I realized is football is perfect for television for various reasons, also the limited amount of games, things like that.
So, yeah, that's why I think that it's become much more culturally influenced.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, what's very interesting about that is that football, remember baseball historically was America's sport. And it happened in the 1970s that football became more popular than baseball. Which kind of tracks to what you're saying. Like, as TV becomes more prominen, then football becomes more popular, you know, and then, like, as our culture becomes more and more based around tv, football becomes more popular. I think there's something to that for sure. Like, I had never thought of that.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Think about it, James. The, the concept of a pastime, right? America's pastime was baseball. When it was, people went outside.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: When people went to. There's a. There's a. There's 82 or 81 home games every year. You can go in the evening, you know, yada, yada. No, I get you, I get you. What's awful now?
[00:25:28] Speaker B: America's pastime is once a week in front of, on Sunday.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Well, but that's also. There's a congregation element to that too. I think that the flows of football really lends itself to following in our modern society. You know, like there is, because there's a game once a week, there's enough time to talk about, to gossip about what just happened, and then to build up for what's about to happen every week. So I actually don't think it's about the actual game as much as I think it's about the way the game. The way that the game is played, schedule wise, sets up and fits into our kind of, you know, our ecosystem. Because if it was about the game, then whenever it was invented, it would have been more popular. But it's like, hey, the way our information ecosystem operates, it's seen, our entertainment ecosystem operates, it seems like it fits with us. You know, movies are released, you know, on a, on a Friday, you know, and you can. So the weekend you can go see a movie or, you know, football games and so forth. I mean, it's not lost on me also that generally speaking, college football is the second most popular sport, which again, has that same week to week, kind of periodic, hey, you know, we play a game, football, college football, you play on Saturday, NFL Junior play on Sunday. But then you can talk about what happened on Monday, Tuesday, and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, talk about what's about to happen. So you build anticipation. One of the things I know about basketball, I follow basketball and I'm like, a game happens. You don't really have time to think about what just happened because there's another game in a day or two and it's like, okay, we got to just keep going. So it doesn't lend itself to kind of building up to the next event, Building up to the next big event. And so I think that the kind of the, the periodic nature of football really fits with the way our society likes to consume things. And then I think they've done a good job of doubling down on that. So I mean, I think, and this is evident, you know, like we talked about the growth in franchise values. Like Jerry Jones bought the team for 100 something million dollars, you know, in the late 80s, the team is valued, you know, well, well north of 10 billion now. And this is that. That's okay, that's, that's one. That's a long period of time, right? Well, just even in the last 10 years, you know, it's gone from being valued in the less than 5 billion range, less than 3 billion range. You know, if you go back to 2014, stuff like that might be valued at 2 billion, and now it's at 12. And it's like, well, geez, 10 years. Like, that's talk about appreciation.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: Let's track the other assets, though. I mean, think about the growth of billionaires and the people at the top. You know, like when we did a show that, you know, what was it? Elon Musk was worth about less than 10 billion in 2010.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Well, but you gotta, you can't look at him like, you can't look at the outlier. We'd have to look at the, the kind of average from that state. What I'm saying, Cowboys aren't an outlier as far as NFL franchises.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: No, but what I'm saying is people who already owned assets that could increase in value, like in the last decade, 20 years, because of just what's happened in the economy and the way things have played out, owning a sports team, because like, you, you told me about the Suns and certain other teams too, that have Celtics that have sold for just these multiples that seemed, would have seemed unrealistic just five to ten years ago. Yeah. And so it's just, I think, like, you, you have a good way of saying it. What is it that, you know, the wealthy just trade assets among, you know, the people at the top are kind of just trading assets amongst each other.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: The things they buy. Or we think we have bad inflation.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: They're buying inflation even crazier, you know, but, you know, I'm not shedding a tear for that. It's just, you know, again, just paying attention. Like, to me, that's more evidence of the wealth imbalance we have. You know, it's just that. Oh, okay. Yeah, the wealthy people are so much more wealthy now than historically they had been, if you go back 20, 30, 40 years. So, you know, but I think that beyond the franchise value, the fact that this is still something or this is something that on an increasing basis is the thing that can get people's attention, really matters as we move forward. And so the Cowboys documentary itself, or this documentary on the Cowboys itself, was a window looking back into the past, but it also kind of is a launch point for the future. You know, like, many would say that this was Jerry Jones's kind of image play. Like, he wants to create a legacy in the public's mind about himself. And this is. He did this in order to build himself up to the public, which, you know, again, that's his right. I'm not going to say whether I think that's right or wrong, so to speak, because I can't get in the guy's head. It does. He does come across as. If you watch this without much background on it. He does come across as a very sympathetic person, you know, or as a person that is like, oh, yeah, I like this guy, so to speak. So if that was his goal, I'd say he probably succeeded. But in any event, I, I, I don't want. Before we close it out, I just wanted to ask you, you know, like, so takeaways, your final takeaways, you know, just kind of, was there anything that you think will stick with you about this, you know, before we get out of here?
[00:30:03] Speaker B: Jerry Jones, the reason why he's such an interesting character to Me is because it that to me, as a guy that didn't see all this at the time and that came in to this documentary with no real opinion, I still couldn't get past the fact that at 82 years old, he's still the GM of the team.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: So it shows this again in the day to day.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Correct. Like what probably did get him successful was being a control freak in a certain way.
But to your point about they haven't won a Super bowl in 30 years almost. So the fact that he can't let go and at 82 he's still got to be the general manager of the team trying to direct traffic is again it shows that humanity that, you know, the dual edged sword of him. So to me that was, that was interesting. And the last takeaway I'll say is as I looked it up out of curiosity, that football is so popular. Soldier Field is the smallest stadium in the NFL and it holds 61,000 people. And as a basketball fan, that's crazy to me because I think the biggest basketball stadium, well, if they play basketball.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: Games once a week and they're only 17, they might be able to do that.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: You know, dude, if a basketball stadium could hold 100,000 people, the nosebleed cease. They couldn't see the game.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: That's true. And they do that sometimes, like with the Final Four and stuff. I'll say this, the biggest takeaway I had was actually that this, the. The story is very common. I just think the characters in this case were very interesting, you know, like. And that's, and that's kind of a fluke in a sense. And then in a sense it's not, you know, like the Irvins, the Emmett Smiths, you know, the Troy Aikman's. All of these guys are interesting characters, you know, like and Jones and Jimmy Johnson, like Charles Haley, you know, like these are. Some of them are crazy, some of them are, you know, but they're all interesting. And. But I always think about, you know, when I look at this, what it reminded me of. And this is something we could see. Like if you could look at the Los Angeles lakers in the 1980s, which is the quote I'm about to is from Pat Riley, who was the coach then of the lakers in the 80s. Um, he's. He's been an executive, he's a coach and then an executive with the Heat more recently. He has something called. Or he has something called the disease of more. And that is what happens after you succeed with, you know, in sports basically. And I think you can expand it out to sports, but. And that's literally what we saw unfold here, you know, like the disease of more. Once you win, then everybody starts wanting more, you know, like, oh, I want a bigger role or I want more money or I want more credit and stuff like that. And so it's a. It's a. It's something that is not unique to the Cowboys. But seeing it play out with the Cowboys was very interesting because the characters themselves, they're pretty open. You know, they're not all hiding this stuff behind the vest. You know, like, they're kind of open about this stuff. And so we get to see kind of this common narrative play out because they're so open and they. They let us in, so to speak. So to me, that's what really, the biggest takeaway I had is that it's not that this stuff never happens. It's that these guys are telling us about it and showing us, you know, so to speak, more so than us just it getting reported on and. Because, again, it's. It's pretty common, you know, so much so that, you know, Riley has a name for it, you know, and I'm not the only person who's ever cited that disease of more things. So, you know, but it. All in all, it was pretty interesting, you know, again, to see this kind of this. This common narrative and to see it play out through such interesting characters. So I think we wrap from there. We appreciate everybody joining us on this episode of Call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: I am Tunde Olamana.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
