After the team posted one more heartbreaking loss to put a final, frustrating bow on a thoroughly disappointing 7-10 season, Cowboys fans waited for owner Jerry Jones to make an appearance.
The assumption was that he would have some sort of statement- on the coaching staff whose jobs now hang very much in the balance, on his vision for the coming direction of the team, and, maybe, on what he plans to do differently to turn around the most visible sports franchise on the planet as their championship drought now stretches toward three full decades.
As it turns out, Jones had things to say Sunday night. Only they were scripted lines of dialogue in a TV series in which he had a cameo role.
The Cowboys owner showed up- as himself- in an episode of Landman, the Paramount+ series from creator Taylor Sheridan (of Yellowstone fame) starring Billy Bob Thornton and set against the backdrop of the West Texas oil business.
Jones’s appearance in Episode 9 takes place in a hospital, where he pays a visit to the character played by Emmy-winning actor Jon Hamm, who has just suffered a heart attack. And while Jones’s lines were written for him to fit the show’s narrative, they could just as easily have been lifted out of any one of the 82-year-old billionaire’s numerous interviews about the foundering football club that he purchased in 1989 and turned into a $10 billion family business.
The scene features Jones explaining how his daughter’s college days at Stanford led him to invest in a few California gas wells, to give him an excuse to visit her on campus more often, and that those wells delivered enough money for him to buy the Cowboys.
While Charlotte really did attend Stanford, that story as told by Jones in Landman has been molded and shaped somewhat for better dramatic effect. He does, though, go on to emphasize the genuine importance of family in a way that rings true for the Cowboys owner.
“I made my mind up a long time ago I was going to work with my kids,” Jones says in the scene. “And they’re involved in everything. They’re involved in my leasing, oil and gas, real estate. And so when I got the Cowboys, I got it so that we could all work together. I thought I was doing it for them, but the one that got the most out of it was me.”
Chalk it up to the lighting, the grainy film look of the cinematography, the background music, the pregnant pauses in his delivery, his cracking voice and even moistened eyes, or just some bit of Hollywood magic worked in the editing booth, but it’s a heartfelt and poignant moment. Jones certainly has never lacked the showmanship gene or a flair for the dramatic.
Jones and the Cowboys worked with Sheridan for their 2023 schedule release video, during the height of Yellowstone‘s popularity. And the Cowboys owner has previously appeared as himself in the fictional worlds of other scripted series, including Coach, Arli$$, Entourage, and The League.
To be fair, performing the Landman scene would have been an easy line item on Jones’s list of commitments and obligations for any given day and certainly would have had no bearing whatsoever on any of the weighty football-related matters swirling around the team in this season that has pushed many of their faithful followers to their breaking point.
But that won’t stop legions of Cowboys fans from screaming to the rafters about Jones’s latest acting gig as just the latest example of the misplaced priorities of the organization’s ultimate leading man.
