2He gave it all for the Cowboys
The price of the Cowboys in 1989 was $70 million, plus Jones had to pay $70 million additionally for the leasing rights and $30 million in overdue bills. The banks were concerned about the future of the Dallas Cowboys, and they would only loan him $34 million. Jones added $77 million of his own money and gave the team a $20 million loan. As collateral, he used his own receivables and assets.
“I was scared to death that my family legacy would be, ‘Dad or Granddad had some money, but he blew it all to buy the Cowboys,’ ” Jones told the Morning News in 2012. The team was losing 1 million per month when Jones took over.
“The interest alone on the investment in the club was another X-million dollars,” he told ESPN. “Eleven percent interest on the amount that I borrowed. It was a bill of about almost $100,000 a day. Now that was going out the door. So when you got up in the morning, crickets get you up or whatever, whether you got up or not that was going out the door. That’ll cause you to get imaginative. That’ll cause you to think of some things that maybe hadn’t been thought of before.”
