DALLAS (105.3 The Fan) - At long last, Jimmy Johnson will take his rightful place in the Cowboys Ring of Honor.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones informed the heralded coach that he'll be inducted into the Ring of Honor during the Hall of Fame Game pregame show on Fox.
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"While I'm alive," Johnson asked Jones while laughing along with Troy Aikman, and the guys from Fox NFL Sunday - Terry Bradshaw, Michael Strahan, Curt Menefee and Howie Long.
Johnson won two Super Bowls as the head coach of the Cowboys in 1993 and 1994 before he and Jones had a falling out, leading to his departure from the organization.
Jerry Jones was driven to tears on multiple occasions during the team’s annual training camp introductory press conference last month, most of all by memories of his football divorce from coach Johnson, who will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this weekend.
“My role here, it was my job to keep it together and should have had deference to something that was working good, those are the things that come to my mind," Jones said, reflective on Johnson’s departure from the team in 1994 following the second Super Bowl win.
“I've never been able to know,” Jones said, “why I f—-ed it up."
The truth of what happened is far more complex than a NSFW soundbite - one of a few that Jones, 78, dropped when talking about how much some level of football normalcy in a COVID time means to him, how much he desperately wants to win a Super Bowl, and how much he believes in but he labels his own “naïveté.”
“It’s a beautiful world and better world to be naive than skeptical and negative,” said Jones, the billionaire who has often stated that is “naive” positivity is a key to his success.
By 1994, of course, the Jones-Johnson relationship was something short of positive. Johnson thought the owner undeservedly wanted credit; Jones thought his coach was disloyal.
They were probably both right.
Johnson out and he got his way, to be replaced by Barry Switzer, who Jones said came to Dallas initially not understanding there was a vacancy.
Jones said Switzer’s first intention was to get the three old friends together to talk it out.
Jones quoting Switzer: “I wanted to get both you a—holes on this couch and ask you how you could f—k this up.”
Jones and Johnson are together again in Canton as the coach enters the Hall of Fame, as Jones did in 2017.
“We had a great run of it,” Jones said, choking back more tears. “He’s a great coach, and I’m proud to have him as a friend and proud to have the times that we had. We just had a great experience.”
And we now know for certain their are more great times to come.
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