When Jerry Jones tried to buy a stake in the Miami Dolphins

Jerral Wayne Jones boarded a plane for Miami.

It was the summer of 1965, and the 22-year-old dreamer faced a daunting crossroads. A University of Arkansas graduate, young Jerry did not know what to do with himself.

The son of grocery store owners from North Little Rock, Arkansas, Jones loved football, and although his diminutive frame precluded a professional career on the offensive line, he contemplated coaching while also dabbling in sales, insurance and small-time entrepreneurship. (1) (2) John ‘Pat’ Jones, the family patriarch, grew frustrated by his son’s indecision, but Jerry followed his heart to Miami, regardless.

Deep down, you see, Jerry saw his future in the glitzy world of professional football – as a promoter, perhaps, or ideally as a team owner. Fresh out of college, and keen to cultivate contacts, Jerry lurked in the lobby of a Houston hotel frequented by executives tethered to the American Football League (AFL). (1) Ever confident, Jones introduced himself to influential honchos as they dashed between meetings, and one such impromptu interaction – with the powerful Joe Robbie – inspired his Florida foray.

Robbie, of course, was co-owner of the Miami Dolphins, an embryonic AFL franchise awarded mere weeks before Jones headed south with a bagful of dreams. A well-connected scholar, attorney, politician and former Naval officer, Robbie was the face of a consortium that bought its way into the AFL for $7.5 million. (3) And while late to the party, Jones headed to Vice City intent on talking his way into a minority ownership stake in the Dolphins. (1) (2) He liked the market’s potential, and he yearned for a foothold in professional sports.

Upon landing, then, Jones made a beeline for Biscayne Boulevard, where Robbie set up the Dolphins’ first offices. “Do you mind lending a hand?” the team owner asked Jerry upon his arrival, pointing to a metal desk marooned on the ground floor. (1) (4) Keen to curry favour, Jones rolled up his sleeves and manoeuvred the desk with George Wilson, the Dolphins’ inaugural head coach, into Robbie’s new office. “I was down there trying to figure out some way, somehow, to get involved,” Jones later reminisced. (1) If shifting furniture helped, so be it.

Alas, Robbie quickly nixed any potential Dolphins involvement for Jerry, but the owner did at least humour the Arkansan, answering questions about the AFL, its operational structure, and potential ownership opportunities elsewhere – all while Jones and Wilson hauled fixtures into Robbie’s lair. (4)

“I told Joe that I wanted to buy an AFL team,” Jones wrote, years later, in a Forbes feature. “It so happened that Barron Hilton was then looking to sell the San Diego Chargers. Joe called him right then and there. Hilton asked Joe, ‘Who is this guy you’re talking to?’ Joe said, ‘I don’t know him at all, and he sure is young, but he says he’s interested in the Chargers and can get the money.’ Hilton said he didn’t have time for tire kickers and dreamers and said, if I was serious, I needed to get him a $1 million letter of credit on his desk in Chicago. Then, and only then, he’d talk to me.” (5)

His Dolphins ambition curtailed, Jerry made a serious run at the Chargers, which almost bore fruit. “Jones rounded up a motley crew of investors and offered $5.8 million for 85 percent of the franchise,” wrote Joe Nick Patoski in 2012. “Pat Jones intervened and convinced his son to put the brakes on the deal. The financials Jerry had put together were shaky. Six months later, the Chargers sold for almost twice the price. Jerry’s skills may have needed polishing, and his ability to put together an investor group needed vetting, but his instincts were on target.” (2)

To that end, Jones never ceased working on his grand ambition of owning a professional football team – even as he focused on building an oil and gas empire throughout his twenties and thirties. Indeed, Jones was 46 when the tenets of his overarching vision – the contacts, the wealth, the opportunity – finally clicked into place. That happened in 1989, when Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys – his eternal holy grail – for $140 million. And the rest, of course, is silver and blue history.

Ultimately, we do not know how close Jerry Jones came to buying an ownership stake in the Miami Dolphins. By most accounts, Joe Robbie barely entertained the notion and seemingly dismissed it out of hand. To a certain extent, therefore, the very concept of Jones (co)-owning the Dolphins was a fanciful pipedream – conjured in his bold, eccentric mind, shorn of any realistic probability.

Still, to imagine Jerry Jones in Miami, rather than Dallas, is a tantalising thought experiment. The butterfly effect invites hyperbolic contemplation. If Jones bought into the Dolphins in 1965, say, and eventually increased his stake to wrest power as the AFC merged with the NFL, football history would have taken a very different path. A colourful and captivating path, almost certainly, but a different path, nevertheless. 

Maybe Tom Landry and Tex Schramm would have led the Cowboys for longer. Perhaps Miami’s perfect 1972 season would have been derailed by Jerry’s infamous meddling. Who knows what would have happened to Dan Marino and Don Shula, Troy Aikman and Jimmy Johnson? Jerryworld may have risen in the Sunshine State, not the Lone Star State. And any number of Vince Lombardi trophies may have traded places.

We will never know, of course, but such is the everlasting intrigue of sporting debate, shared around hot stoves and barstools from sea to shining sea. In the modern landscape, few – if any – people are more synonymous with one team as Jerry Jones is with his Cowboys. But for a conversation while assembling office furniture in the heat of a sixties summer, though, that association may never have happened at all, leaving fans in both cities to ponder what might have been.

Sources

1. Polian, Bill and Carucci, Vic. Super Bowl Blueprints: Hall of Famers Reveal the Keys to Football's Greatest Dynasties. 2021.

2. Patoski, Joe Nick. The Dallas Cowboys: The Outrageous History of the Biggest, Loudest, Most Hated, Best Loved Football Team in America. 2012.

3. George, Dave. Palm Beach Post. [Online] September 5, 2015. https://eu.palmbeachpost.com/story/sports/nfl/2015/09/05/joe-robbie-s-political-hollywood/7194465007/.

4. Magee, David. Playing to Win: Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys.

5. Jones, Jerry. Forbes. [Online] May 2, 2012. https://www.forbes.com/sites/monteburke/2012/05/02/when-jerry-jones-nearly-bought-the-chargers-and-learned-about-business-the-hard-way/.