Jerry Jones Declares War on Committee that Governs Commissioner Goodell’s Contract Extension

There’s an old saying which states: If you can’t beat them, join them. However, if Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones had his way, that old adage would read: If you can’t beat them, disband them.

After being told by the NFL Compensation Committee to abandon his quest to delay or derail Roger Goodell’s contract extension, Jerry Jones, it seems, would rather just get rid of the Compensation Committee.

In his weekly interview with 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Jones remained confident in his belief that he will ultimately get what he wants in his showdown with Goodell. Jones said, “I think that ultimately we will influence what I want to influence.”

However, far more interesting is how Jones appears to want to influence the events that he wants to influence.

Jones explained:

[T]he bottom line is he’s very powerful and you want to influence the Commissioner. There’s a big debate as to one of the biggest things a Commissioner does is resolve disputes. He resolves them between everybody. So there’s an argument that he should be autonomous from being accountable. That’s legitimate. . . . Well, the Commissioner covers the whole league, the business aspect of it, the basically discipline aspect of it, the rules, the officials. And, so, no one — no one — would like it if you had three or four owners that were paying the officials. No one would like that because it should be all the owners that pay the officials. But yet you want them to be independent. Well, all owners should be holding the Commissioner accountable in my view. That’s the gist of this thing.

This is quite a radical suggestion from Jones. What he’s basically saying, is that responsibility for determining the commissioner’s compensation should be spread amongst all 32 owners, and not just a select few. It’s quite a shrewd plan, and one that quite honestly has a very low probability of working. Though, if it did work, it would make make it much more difficult for Goodell to cater to the will of specific owners.

Whether Jones’ quasi-coup succeeds or not, stating his commitment to changing the very system under which the commissioner gets compensated will take some time. Meaning that Jones sees the issue of Goodell’s contract extension as only one battle in a very, very long war.