Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision, and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and six clearing houses around the world. Now welcome Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
True story. It's 1993. The Dallas Cowboys have just won Super Bowl XLVIII and the team is headed to the White House, where I worked back then, to meet the president of the United States. We are all new to the place and don't quite have our protocol buttoned down yet. So what do you do with a champion pro football team in the East Room of the White House? Well, if you are my predecessor in the job that I'd have in a few months, you put out the word to lay down a layer of AstroTurf over the parquet so Troy Aikman can feel like he's right inside the Rose Bowl of Pasadena. Well, that did not go over so well. Then it's a year later, March 1st, 1994, the Cowboys have done it again, beating the Buffalo Bills 30 to 13 in the Georgia Dome in Super Bowl XXVIII.
Josh King:
Again, we're hosting Jerry Jones and his team carrying their Vince Lombardi Trophy to Washington. We've learned our lesson this time, a year older, a year wiser and I'm now in the job of producing all the big events in the White House. No AstroTurf, just the grandeur of the Roosevelt Room, but couldn't we maybe just have a little fun? I call a Hollywood special effects house. We get in touch with Bob Costas at NBC. We write a script. Costas records it. We make video using some special effects, which at the time, were pretty advanced. This is how it sounded.
Bob Costas:
Welcome back to the Georgia Dome. Late in the third quarter, the Dallas Cowboys leading by a touchdown and driving for more, third and two inside Buffalo territory. Aikman back to throw, off the play, action fakey, rolls, right, hits Jay Novacek for the first down at the 38-yard line. Aikman moving the Cowboys smartly down the field. Wait a minute. Is that a startling coaching move by Jimmy Johnson? Inserts President Clinton at quarterback in the Super Bowl. Well, we know Clinton's a cool customer. He's a man who stared down Bob Dole without flinching, but this ends as the Super Bowl. The chief executive back to throw. Good protection. Fires deep for Alvin Harper, hood inside the five. And he bounces for the touchdown. Clinton moving the Cowboys down the field and shredding the Buffalo defense like Al Gore zipping through Ross Perot in the NAFTA debate.
Josh King:
Like Al Gore zipping through Ross Perot in the NAFTA debate. Those were the days. Well, suffice to say, that video never saw the light of day. This instead is how the event sounded when Mr. Jones went to Washington.
President Clinton:
I have to say a little bit of parochial pride on the half of my state that I'm really proud of the work that Jerry Jones has done at the Cowboys in such a few years and proud of the remarkable achievements that this team has already seen. I think that it is just the beginning of what will doubtless be years and years and years of stunning achievement if they can just keep their goals high and keep working for them. It's a great honor to have them here. I'd like to invite them to say a few words. Who's going first? Jerry?
Jerry Jones:
I go first. Okay.
President Clinton:
Let's give him a hand.
Jerry Jones:
What we'd like to do, give the president a hand. Thank you. Mr. President, to begin with, we have taken the liberty to duplicate our Super Bowl, our Lombardi Trophy named after Vince Lombardi. It is the Super Bowl trophy. We duplicated these trophies and gave one to each of our players and our coaches. It would be a real honor for the Dallas Cowboys for you to have one of our trophies that are for our team and be a part of the team. But we'd like to put on this trophy, 1993 Super Bowl champions, 1994 Super Bowl champions, and we're going to leave a little space open.
Josh King:
We're going to leave a little space open. They needed it. The Cowboys won one more Super Bowl, number 30, against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona in 1996. But the Lombardi Trophy has been without another etching of the name of America's team since then. This year, a 17-week Shackleton-level Endurance campaign, which began this week in stadiums around on the country, begins the quest towards Super Bowl LIV at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. Sports Illustrated's MMQB projects the Dallas team to finish with a record of nine and seven with the Saints over the Rams for the NFC championship.
Josh King:
If Dak Prescott, the newly signed Zeke Elliott, and Amari Cooper have any say in the matter, perhaps Mr. Jones will once again find himself in the White House showing off his team's sixth Vince Lombardi Trophy. But today, Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys is in our house, the ICE House, the New York Stock Exchange, and we're going to learn a lot more about the non-football side of the Texas legend, his eye on natural gas through Comstock Resources, and yeah, we'll see if the team has what it takes to make it to Miami. That's right after this.
Speaker 7:
It's more than an iconic building or a global financial marketplace. It's anywhere technology, commerce, and people intersect, the innovation that makes people's lives better. Dreams that were once impossible are now realities. At the New York Stock Exchange, we help tech companies flourish and change the world. So go ahead, bring those ideas to life. We'll bring it to market. We are living tough.
Josh King:
Jerry Jones doing deals usually shows up on page one of the sports pages, but there it was this past June, Comstock Resources, NYSE ticker symbol, CRK, the company that Jones controls paid 1.1 billion for Covey Park, a privately held firm that controls much of the natural gas production in the Haynesville basin in Northern Louisiana and East Texas, a source, which some say may hold 20 trillion cubic feet of potential reserves. I once read a quote from Jerry in which he said, "You wouldn't want to see the size of the check that I would write if it would for sure get the Dallas Cowboys a Super Bowl." Well, we now know the size of the check he'd write to put his stamp on the future of natural gas. There's no way to properly introduce this man, so let me just take out a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue here in the library and ask you, sir, if you want to have a proper visit. Welcome inside the ICE House.
Jerry Jones:
Thanks. It's great to be here. It's really neat to have these memories and hear the presentation at the White House that we made of the replica of the Lombardi Trophy. I know that I like to have gone broke contributing to Bill Clinton to try to keep him in the presidency as long as he could be president, we could keep winning Super Bowls. But bottom line is that he was someone that everybody from the state of Oregon, so I had a great pride in. He had so many of my friends that were a part of his administration. I'll never forget when we went to the first recognition for our first Super Bowl. I was visiting with him and he said I was 16. I used to listen by my radio in Hope, Arkansas. He said, "I remember all of the players." While he was standing there with me, he quoted the team that I played on, the Arkansas Razorbacks, quoted them, "Three deep on both sides of the ball," that he remembered. That was his great memory.
Josh King:
That's the kind of memory he had. He has that about a sports and I was treated to that too. But for you to have your 1964 team three deep, he could probably talk about the offensive and defensive schemes as well.
Jerry Jones:
Right. Who would've thought back then that I was wondering around the state of Arkansas and he was wandering around the state and one would go on to power and fame and some fortune and the other one ended up president of the United States.
Josh King:
Exactly.
Jerry Jones:
That is a joke.
Josh King:
I know.
Jerry Jones:
I've told that before.
Josh King:
I know.
Jerry Jones:
I told that before and it didn't come across when it was written as a joke.
Josh King:
I'm going to have some more stuff about you and Coach Broyles and your time in Arkansas as well, but just for today, your visit here in a life of so many superlatives, Mr. Jones, ringing the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, it's an honor that's also been shared by Robert Kraft and Malcolm Glazer in 2002, Arthur Blank earlier this year. How did it feel to have global markets launch at your fingertips?
Jerry Jones:
Well, it is just awesome, frankly. From the time we walked in from outside, it's a wonderful combination. As you know, we have a great rivalry with the New York Giants and a few with the Jets, but we have so many Cowboy fans. We sell outside our home market area. The most memorabilia we sell is here in New York to Cowboy fans, an amazing number of Cowboy fans up here. That's always a lot of fun. As a matter of fact, one of the inspirations I had to be involved in pro football was unlike college football, pro football is where usually where the big cities are. It has the aura of the city. You feel Mickey Mantle or you feel Frank Gifford when you come to New York or you go to Chicago and you think about George Halas and Mike Ditka. The same thing is true around the great cities, and none manifest that more than New York.
Jerry Jones:
I've always had just such a complete overblown feeling about sport. My first trip to New York, I got out of the cab, had to go to Yankee Stadium. I got out of the cab and I just walked up and put my hand on Yankee Stadium and I said, "Yogi, I know you're in there somewhere. Mickey, I know you're in there someplace." It just felt like that you were getting to actually go back and just a part of the glory of America and sports.
Josh King:
And the Shield stands proudly over 345 Park Avenue, so the league really has its epicenter here with so many of the media companies that you're doing deals with on a weekly basis.
Jerry Jones:
Yeah. It's neat that New York is, if you will, it shares it to some degree with Los Angeles, but it's neat that New York has this aspect of entertainment, certainly media. I never dreamed though when I got involved with the Cowboys. I left the oil and gas business and in the natural gas business specifically, and that's how I made the money that I used to buy the Cowboys. But that area is as competitive. You have to think on your feet. You have to be as resourceful as anything that I've ever heard about or seen. I thought when I went to sports that I would get cabin fever, island fever. I thought it would be too boring. I said, "Now, I love this stuff, but I might get tired of watching film. Where am I going to get my action?" Who would've ever known that I would get to spend my days not only on practice fields, not only watching film, but involved in television agreements, involved in building billion dollar stadiums? Who would've ever thought that the business aspect of the NFL would evolve? It really inspired me to do that.
Josh King:
Well, your hand on Yankee Stadium reminds me of the idea that the view that you had from the podium down in the exchange, it isn't too different from the owner's box at AT&T Stadium. But maybe if we get your other company, Legends, in here to do some more hospitality work, we could start selling tickets and do a big tour business right in this building.
Jerry Jones:
Yeah. Legends just makes me smile to think about it.
Josh King:
I love Legends.
Jerry Jones:
But when we built our stadium, the Yankees were building their new stadium. George Steinbrenner was still alive. I had met George in Oklahoma City in my early days in oil and gas. He had just bought the New York Yankees and we had the same attorney. He would come to Oklahoma City to confer with that attorney. I'll never forget, they said, "I've got someone I want you to meet." And there comes George Steinbrenner. He really wasn't as known or visible at that time. Man, the first thing he did was give me three or four Yankee caps and then he gave me some Yankee T-shirts and then he did this and I thought, "Man, he is having fun. He is loving this owning the New York Yankees."
Jerry Jones:
Well, later, after I've bought the Cowboys, I get a note from him. I said, "Yes, it's Jerry, the one in Oklahoma City." He would write me inspirationally three or four times a year so that when we got ready to actually join in a marketing effort, the Yankees and the Cowboys, George Steinbrenner told his sons and told his attorney, he said, "I don't even need a piece of paper with Jerry. I'd go in business with him and lock with him step for step without anything written down. Let's get the partnership going."
Josh King:
Legends is located just a couple blocks away at One World Trade Center. You always know a Legends experience when you walk into it. I've been to the Legends Suite at Yankee Stadium a couple times. Love, of course, someday to come to AT&T Stadium. But there is this kind of hospitality that I think you probably got from your parents in Arkansas growing up.
Jerry Jones:
Yeah. The growing up period for me was customer service. When I was nine, mother put a little bow tie on me and I would greet the ladies when they came to the grocery store. Mother would wink when she knew one of them was a tipper and I'd push her basket around and get the cans out of the shelf for her to get me a tip. But the bottom line is that it was customer service. My father put a bandstand in the middle of the grocery store and he had immature talent contests up there and live radio broadcast. He'd walk around with guns on his hip and a cowboy hat. So he was putting the show on selling groceries. Obviously, that's where I got the idea of doing everything you can to make it entertaining, and we use that at Legends a lot.
Josh King:
Even when you're growing up a little bit from that time where you're putting the bow tie on, black suit on at Pat Jones' grocery store, you're still, when you're playing football for the Arkansas Razorbacks, going back to the store and stocking the shelves and making homemade ice cream at night.
Jerry Jones:
Yeah. There's always been an insecurity in a good way, but when I was in college, they called it scalping tickets. Tickets were seven on the face of them. We had great teams. We won the national championship. You could sell any ticket for 20. I would go over and buy student tickets for a dollar from all the freshman girls. I would have about 20 or 30 of them, and I'd sell those for 20 to people in Little Rock and people over the state. But how were they going to get in? They had no student ID. I'd get all taped up, get my pads on, get all ready to go, put on my street clothes, walk to the player's gate. I looked like the Pied Piper going across the back of the end zone with about 20 or 30 people leading them up into the stands. I was making $400 and $500 a football game when I was in college when my monthly rent for an apartment was 60 and you could buy Riviera for $4,000. I made a lot of money in that.
Josh King:
That'll take care of you in Fayetteville, right? Frank Broyles, Jerry, passed away around this time two years ago and you co-captained the 1964 national championship Razorback squad that he coached. Let's hear the opening call from the 1965 Cotton Bowl, number two, Arkansas versus number six, Nebraska.
Speaker 9:
Members of both squads gather for the coin toss. Lyle Sittler and Bobby Hohn represent Nebraska, Kenny Hatfield and Ronnie Caveness represent Arkansas. Nebraska wins the toss of the coin and elects to receive. Arkansas takes the win. There are final handshakes, a long awaited signal from the referee, and the 29th Cotton Bowl Classic is underway as big Glen Ray Hines booms the opening kickoff into and out of the Nebraska end zone.
Josh King:
So you've got a statue of Broyles in your office, Jerry. Beyond the arithmetic he used, how did he build and grow a team?
Jerry Jones:
Well, he was probably the best coach of coaches. For instance, the team that I played on that won the national championship. It had Barry Switzer and Freddie Akers, the coach that would be at Oklahoma and be at Texas. It had Johnny Majors, the coach at Tennessee. It had Doug Dickey, a coach at Florida. It had Hayden Fry, the coach at Iowa State and SMU. Within five years after I played the last game, every coach on the staff was head coach of a major college, and that was our coaching staff. So we outcoached them. We had good players, not necessarily great players, but boy, we were coached up. I remember we used to on special teams so that we would not hold and we won the national best special team two years in a row, but we would use broomsticks.
Jerry Jones:
We would put that broomstick behind our back and we would hop and we would set up the walls for returns and that would keep you from using your hands. A holding penalty was a sin on a special teams play. We led the nation in special teams. Ken Hatfield let it in kickoff and punt returns those two years that we're there too. He was an outstanding coach. He was an outstanding man. His wife had Alzheimer's and he wrote a book on caregiving. I'll never forget I had the chance to talk about him at an event. We would always, as players, stand up and hold our hand up in the fourth quarter with four fingers raised. We would say, "Boys, this is when it hurts. Now it's not fun anymore. You got a blooded nose. You're tired. You're kicked around a little bit. Now's when you call on it. You're not pretty anymore." Coach Broyles did that in life. And I told him, I said, "Coach, here we are in the fourth quarter. You're in the fourth quarter and here you are still coaching us about how to act in the fourth quarter."
Josh King:
How to act in the fourth quarter. I don't know, Jerry, if Coach Garrett is going to be using broomsticks at camp in the final days before kickoff on Sunday against the Giants, but you can talk about the whole calendar year in the life of the NFL from Super Bowl Sunday to the draft to the combine to the league meetings, but I'd have to think that this week, when every team is zero and zero is the most hopeful, happiest time of year. Here's Al Michaels in a spot airing this week to inaugurate the league's 100th season.
Al Michaels:
You know that's the thing about kicking off the NFL's 100th season. I don't think there's any anybody out there who can possibly put that into words.
Betty White:
I can.
Al Michaels:
Betty White?
Betty White:
Shh, B-Dog's talking now. 100 years of NFL history, the Packers and the Bears. There's only one thing more badass than this year's kick-off, and you're looking at her.
Josh King:
Betty White with a big national TV cameo. Jerry Jones, this is the happiest week of the NFL, isn't it?
Jerry Jones:
I think so. Everybody's a winner this week. If not, you're a player away and you're betting to see, hoping to see that guy develop for you the free agent or unproven player. But this is an exciting time. We have a league that as much as I complain sometimes, that has good balance and the teams can get even real quick with a key entry here or a key entry there. It's amazing the teams that come from nowhere and win a Super Bowl. So we've got a lot of balance. I know that in the 30 years that I've been involved in the NFL, these are the best players. These are the best coach teams. I think that our game is so refined compared to 30 years ago. We've got a lot of offense in this game. We've got a lot of rules in this game that play too, the offense. I think all of that has made it a very interesting game.
Jerry Jones:
We hear a lot about injury and my view is that you'll have the high school level ball, amateur sport, younger level than that, I'm not much on playing football until you're about in junior high, but then you'll have high school and that'll be one level of physicalness. Then you go to college. Well, that's the camaraderie of the collegiate atmosphere and it's a whole lot about that and the student and everything that goes with it. But when you come to pro, that's when they take the Olympic headgear off, they take the Olympic gloves off. They drop it down there, the eight ounce gloves, and that's when the boys get after it, and they hurt, and they mean business. That's pro football and that's what I think we'll see as time goes along. Pro football is supposed to be rugged and it is, but that's what makes the game exciting. There's so much at stake every play.
Josh King:
I want to talk about natural gas, because as much as you appear on the NFL Network, ESPN, and Fox Sports, chances are that I'm one of the rare places where we'll burn valuable time with you talking about burning natural gas. Here is the word from NBC 5 in Dallas back in June.
Speaker 12:
Dallas Cowboys' owner, Jerry Jones, made headlines yesterday when an energy company he controls acquire a smaller company for $2.2 billion.
Josh King:
$2.2 billion the way that your dad might have sat at, Jerry. What attracted to you to the deal output at Haynesville? It's the nation's second fastest growing among the shell basins.
Jerry Jones:
Well, I think that this says many things and anything that I say has got to say one thing. I've worked hard and I've understand risk. I know that in order for something to be successful in business, it has to be extremely well managed, but you have to have the goods. It's like having a football team and no players. You have to have the goods. I have had great experience in making money in natural gas. That's how I got the Cowboys, is the money I made from exploration and drilling and natural gas. Natural gas, to me, has always also been about marketing, selling it. So you had different conditions. There was a time when the pipelines were only available to those that owned them and you've had various challenges as time, various state regulations.
Jerry Jones:
Right now in the world, the best opportunity that I have seen to make money has been the position of Comstock in Northern Louisiana and East Texas, and the great, I'm going to call them rocks, but it's actually the natural gas that is there. Because as would have it, it is located at the most efficient way, money wise, to get it to the people that use it, either burning for a power plant, either burning it for any LNG use, its location, and it has the best expertise of getting it out of the ground. I have a chance and do very involved in North Dallas real estate, which a lot of people thinks one of the best markets in real estate there is, and I'm going to arm wave here, in the world. I have a chance to be in that. I've had a chance to be involved in what is known as the most valuable sports franchise in the world. The best opportunity going in that I've ever been involved in is the opportunity that I see with Comstock and what I'm doing there.
Jerry Jones:
Consequently, on the basic business, I've not only put a billion one into Comstock, but doing the very same thing that Comstock does, I've put another half a billion. I've probably put a billion six of my own money in the last 36, 40 months being involved there. Now we're in a soft time in that industry. That's go time for me. Every time I have done it, every time that I've either gone in the oil business or every time that I've gone in the football business, every time I've ever gone in the real estate business, I went in when everybody thought it was soft and I went hard.
Josh King:
I'm looking at slide nine of Comstock's recent presentation. LNG export demand expected to accelerate rapidly to Mexico by pipeline and around the world by ship. The Gulf coast where Haynesville serves is like the AT&T Stadium of all that activity. It's the center of the universe.
Jerry Jones:
When people talk about what the Dallas Cowboys are worth and is the most valuable sports entity, that has a certain ring to it for me, but that's it, just a ring because it will never see the market. When we're talking about the Haynesville, when we're talking about reserves in the Haynesville, that could end up in Tokyo.
Josh King:
Right out of the Gulf.
Jerry Jones:
That could end up in China right from North Louisiana, and that is money and that is monetizing it. That's not a value in Forbes magazine, that is the real deal. I like it better than I do the acres in North Dallas. That's why I'm there.
Josh King:
I know you own the Dallas Cowboys, not the Dallas Stars, but that serves a hockey stick of demand of global LNG over the next 30, 40 years.
Jerry Jones:
Well, I know that you like to think that you're doing your homework anytime you do anything. The more you have worked, the more precious your dollar is and you know how hard they are to get. In my world, everything speaks to the value of what an MCF of gas is going to be worth as we move along. To get there though, we all know that you have to leave to get there, and that's liquidity. So it's very important right now that you have a mentality of operating within your cash flow. You guide that ship as though you were driving a car down an old country road. You better have your eyes on the road and you move out of the way of something coming across the road or stay in the road. That's what we're doing at Comstock. We'll drive this car the same way that I do with the Cowboys or anything else, and we'll drive this car and in doing so, on a current basis or a long term basis, I expect us to be the leader of low-cost gas in this nation, producer.
Josh King:
AT&T Stadium has to use a lot of natural gas. Texas consumes 100 times as much energy as Vermont, maybe 13% of the US demand as a whole. California has 12 million more people in it, but only uses 60% of the energy that Texas uses. But now, wind provides 22% of the state's electrical needs just edging out coal. Back in 2003, wind made up just 0.8% while coal provided 40%. So natural gas is this tremendously important transitional fuel. In your conversations with Governor Abbott and other local officials, what are the opportunities for Texas to lead by example in the coming energy transition by using more of that acreage as the sun shines and the wind blows?
Jerry Jones:
Yeah. Well, I think we are in the most friendly place that I know of, Texas, the United States. I take that with the advent of us being able to export the products and the natural gas, but being able to do that. But I think we're in the friendliest place and that had everything to do with my investment. I have seen times, how about all the other times that I was not this committed in natural gas or I was not committed to drilling and that has everything to do with markets or anticipated markets. But I sit here and I get pretty excited about the Cowboys 15, 20 years from now because I see what the demand is going to be to watch it and to watch football over the television with all the changes that are going on now. I feel the same way as far as the future. But in order to get to the future, you got to go now. The best place in the country to spend a dollar and get a return in my world is to put it in a Haynesville natural gas well right now. That's where it is.
Jerry Jones:
Right now, with prices where they are today, I can say that you project any price increases at all as time goes along, let gas get anywhere near comparable to pricing of crude oil or the pricing of a gallon of gasoline, and then you will have looked around the corner, so to speak, and you will have had a crystal ball because the economics will be even more impressive. All of that is factored in me making the kind of commitment that I have made on a personal basis. I might add too that to make things, really, everything you want it to be with your dollars, then you have to count on commitments of a lot of people, a lot of careers. So you look to the quality of the people that are willing to commit their careers.
Jerry Jones:
If people don't necessarily invest with resources, then they're putting everything they've ever trained to be or everything they're going to be on the line. It's called emptying their bucket with their life. I'm seeing some of the finest people I've ever met in my life, some of the most qualified people that are betting on the future of natural gas joining Comstock and basically preparing for the years ahead with their careers. That's impressive to me. It can get pretty lonely sometimes if you're bucking a trend. On the other hand, a lot of times, what you're seeing is not necessarily lack of knowledge, you're just seeing a lack of resolve. It's just always hard to go when nobody else is going.
Josh King:
We have looked into the crystal ball of the future of natural gas with Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, principal shareholder of Comstock Resources. When we come back with Jerry Jones, the product he's putting on the field, the 2019 Dallas Cowboys, and the journey for America's team while Mr. Jones has owned the franchise. That's right after this.
Speaker 13:
And now a word from Artur Bergman, CEO of Fastly, NYSE ticker symbol, FSLY.
Artur Bergman:
Fastly is an edge cloud platform. We help deliver digital experiences for amazing customers like Spotify and Ticketmaster and New York Times. We have started eight years ago. It's been an amazing journey. We work very closely with our customers. We're a very critical part in their business. We're very selective in type of customers we want in our network. Fastly is built by developers for developers. Fastly is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Josh King:
Back now with Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys and in his capacity for his visit to the New York Stock Exchange today and his visit with me, the controlling shareholder of Comstock resources, NYSE CRK, which in June, brought privately held Covey Park more than tripling the company's grip on the largest natural gas basins in the United States. Jerry, this episode of the Inside the ICE House is going to be number 128. Back on episode five, we had Carl Quintanilla from CNBC sitting in the chair you're sitting in today. He had just come back from South Korea covering the Winter Olympics. I'm told that the Haynesville basin, the natural gas exported through the Gulf through LNG carriers across the pacific into South Korea is all US fuel.
Jerry Jones:
Well, this is the future. It's the present, really. But what's impressive is the infrastructure and the investment in that infrastructure of the LNG processing plants. I love to drill a well within a tank of gas and an automobile from those processing plants, and that's where we're drilling them. That's very critical to this entire plant, proximity, market, proximity to the market. That all relates to how much it costs you to get it there. So we not only have prolific production, but we have a low cost way to get it into these facilities. Those facilities have had huge investments. The cost of turning it into LNG is very efficient. We're going to be sitting right there and all of those great places with very competitive fuel.
Josh King:
Turning now to football, Jerry, Ross Perot passed away about two months ago at the age of 89. He gave you some advice with regard to art collecting. You're looking at it right now, which was Norman Rockwell's Coin Toss. What does it mean to you?
Jerry Jones:
Well, I had recently purchased the Cowboys a couple of weeks before, and I get a call from Mr. Perot. I'd never met him, but I knew him through his run for the presidency and through my admiration for him as an American iconic business person. He said, "Jerry, I have something that you ought to have. It's called the Toss and it's of two young men that are football players, and it has an official making the toss." He said, "The owner of the Cowboys ought to have this. The providence of this should be buying through the Dallas Cowboys." And I said, "Mr. Perot, my pockets are empty on the real deal, which is the football team. I don't have enough to keep investing in football, period." And he said, "You ought to look at this, Jerry. I'm very proud of these Norman Rockwells I have."
Jerry Jones:
I did. I bought up two other paintings by different artists and I think I paid a million one. The last Christie's valuation on it was about 25 million. It certainly had that kind of appreciation, but more importantly, it's the story of how it got here through Ross Perot is very meaningful as well. Since that time, we have made many purchases of Norman Rockwells as well as other football artists, if you will. One of the things that the Cowboys own that I'm the proudest of is their art collection of these American illustrators.
Josh King:
At your hall of fame induction speech two years ago, Jerry, you devoted a good portion of the talk to your kids. I want to hear a little clip.
Jerry Jones:
The opportunity to work on a daily basis with three people who share your name, your genetics, and your passion is a blessing. I get credit for their ideas, their hard work. They're my backbone. They're my inspiration.
Josh King:
So Stephen, Charlotte, and Jerry Jr. each have key roles in your business, much in the same way that you put on your black suit and bow tie to help Pat Jones run his grocery. Whatever the scale, the opportunity to spend the work day with your kids building something that has this ability to look out 20, 30, 40 years the way you think of the Cowboys has to be priceless.
Jerry Jones:
Yeah, it's the best part. Certainly have challenges. I'm asked all the time, how do you get by those obvious challenges working in that close and that intricately with that immediate family? My father and I, initially, when I first got out of school, worked together and he could run circles around me. He did have a big front door, a lot in, and a small back door, a little out. He was outstanding salesman. I decided at a point that I wanted to go into the oil and gas business. He decided to go into, frankly, the wild animal business tourism business. He's very successful at doing it. When I think of what he could have brought to the table if he had been with me in the Cowboys, and maybe I brought with him the kinds of things that I've enjoyed with my kids, and we could have had this 30 years together.
Jerry Jones:
Now I lost him about 10 years ago, but still, that time could have been even more productive and we could have spent our ups and downs in our daily lives that much closer. I did confer with him all the time. I'll never forget right after buying the Cowboys, he called and he said, "Jerry," he said, "I've never seen anything so visible and so controversial." And he said, "You're under a microscope." He said, "Let me tell you something, son." He said, "I don't care if you have to do it or if you don't do it. You got to make it look successful using mirrors or smoke or something. If you're a failure here, you're going to be known as a failure the rest of your life." I said, "Boy, dad, you know how to make Monday morning for Jerry." But we had a great time. That time of a little longing for wishing that I'd worked more closely with him very much gave me a lot of stick to relative to working with my kids early, and I'm glad we did it.
Josh King:
Working with your kids now, you've celebrated the 30th anniversary of your ownership of the Cowboys. This year, you've got three Lombardi trophies to show for it under your tenure or an average of one per decade if you want to see it as a long arc. It's a good record for a league with 32 teams in it. You're the defending NFC champions, but you can't be satisfied as we start this new season.
Jerry Jones:
No, I made this deal on the third Super Bowl. We had won two and I said, "Lord, do it one more time. Let me have it once more. I will never ask again, just give me this one so it would be so special to have it." I got it. I've been trying to retrade that deal for the last 26 years.
Josh King:
A big source of news over the last few weeks, the status of your all pro running back Zeke Elliott. He's been training on his own in Cabo with Marshall Faulk. He's now made his way back to Dallas. The deal was signed. How do you feel about the team as it starts this crusade at zero and zero?
Jerry Jones:
We're the one of the youngest teams. I don't know that we're the youngest, could be. We were last year. Now we've added that old man Witten back on the team and we're glad to have him. But the point is we're young, yet we've had a lot of experience. Zeke's had a lot of reps and yet he's just going into his fourth year. Dak's had a lot of reps. We're a young, but experienced team in many spots. That's a good thing. The youth should help us with our injury, our durability. We should utilize the experience. So I really like the makeup of the team. The roster arguably is talented roster as I've ever been associated with, especially where it counts with the big boys. Both fronts are stronger and horse ready. We've got a lot of depth, so that has to serve you well. That's a big deal in pro football. So I look at our depth.
Jerry Jones:
Now we've got some young coaches, especially on offense. I told our coordinator when he and our offensive line coach, which were very young guys too, how about first coaching jobs? And I said, "No, guys. I'm not paying for experience here. I'm not getting the learned aspect of coaching. What I am paying for is enthusiasm, nuts. I'm paying for courage. I'm paying for all of those kinds of things that go with being a young man. Don't get out here and be conservative on me. Don't get out here and not cut some corners. Don't do that because if I needed conservatism, I could do that with an older coach." So I look for coaching to be an exciting part of this team and I look for some real imaginative changes and we'll be on them quick if we don't have it.
Josh King:
Talking about first coaching jobs, I'm keeping close tabs on this season of Hard Knocks focusing on Jon Gruden and his staff of the Oakland Raiders. Want to hear just a little clip of that season.
Jon Gruden:
Sean McVay came my last year as the head coach in Tampa. He wanted to get in the NFL, so we made him a secretary, really, just to get him in the building. They started like I started. They called me the piss-boy in the Mel Brooks movie. They'd call for the guy to come running over there with the bucket and then next thing I know, he's helping coach the wide receivers and he's coming up with ideas for game plans.
Speaker 17:
Hey, lock it down, man. It's going to take.
Jon Gruden:
You like football?
Sean McVay:
Yes, Sir. I love it.
Jon Gruden:
Yeah? Are you going to work at it or are you just going to watch it?
Josh King:
That's Jon Gruden talking about Sean McVay and McVay comes into the screen. That's from an earlier season when he was with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It's making me, this season, care as much about that team, the Raiders and its season ahead as when Plunkett was its quarterback. The Cowboys got that treatment in 2002 and 2008. Jerry, what's the calculus of doing that deal? Way to sell merchandise or get more people passionate about the Cowboys?
Jerry Jones:
Oh, I think that I want any fan that has the interest to view or be involved in any aspect of building a team of football. I know that I enjoy doing it. I spend hours watching tape right now and have forever. I would have been a coach and been watching tape, but I was too greedy.
Josh King:
It didnt pay as much.
Jerry Jones:
I didn't think that coaches were going to economically be where I wanted to be and have what I wanted to have. Had I known what I'm paying them now, I'd have been a damn coach because economics are there. But the point is I wanted something else. But every time that I thought about it, I tried to find a way back in there. There was my interest in being involved through the business. My master's thesis was the role of marketing in modern day football. I had a business degree and I had a MA degree, but it was the role of marketing in modern day football.
Jerry Jones:
I've interviewed. Coach Broyles got me interviews with Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, Paul Dietzel, the great coaches of the time. Bear Bryant said, "I'm an actor." He said, "I'm an actor." And he said, "I'm selling. That's what I do." At the end of the day, they all were selling and were salesman. That was inspirational, but bottom line is, to answer your question, is anytime I can get these Cowboys on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, anytime I can get them in a house organ of an engineering magazine or in some art magazine, anytime I can get them in a horticultural digest, I want the Cowboys in there.
Josh King:
I can't wait to see Dak Prescott's horticultural suggestions for 2020. But talking about watching tape, your former quarterback, Tony Romo never got a Super Bowl ring playing for you, but he's developed a Super Bowl voice as an analyst on CBS, helping really extend the brand in everything that he does. Want to hear just a little clip of how he works his magic behind the mic.
Tony Romo:
This doesn't happen very often. You're going to enjoy this one. Jim, you want to see the play of the year, I think from a quarterback perspective, watch this from the first half. Look at Mahomes' eyes and head. He's looking to the right and throws it all the way across left. That, you will not see again anywhere this year, I promise you.
Josh King:
You said that not winning a championship with Romo under center has been one of your big regrets, but what are your thoughts on the second career he's found behind the mic?
Jerry Jones:
Well, first of all, I want to reiterate to have had a talent, unique talent, to have had his intelligence, football intelligence, to have had his vision, Tony's one of the few people that I've ever heard about that at practice, when he lined up under center at practice, could run up under the center, look quickly and say, "You all got 12 people out here" that quick. His vision is extraordinary. Tony was just ahead of his coaches as well as his teammates when he would go up to that line and he would see things and he would adjust. He'd literally tell his guys, "No, block this guy. Block that guy." It really, because you got to have 10 people doing it right to get off a good play, it was just probably more than you could put out there every time. We talk about gaming now and we talk about presenting the game and presenting nuances of the game that we've never done. The NFL's never done it that we've never done.
Jerry Jones:
Well, what we're talking about is Romo stepped up there and say, "They've got that safety. He's six inches to the side of the hash mark to the inside." He can't get to the cornerback if they all drop one in the deal there. He's watching where they're lined up in calling the play. Tony would be a card counter in Las Vegas and they'd banned him from talking about it if you were gaming on those TV show, on those TV presentations of these ball games. He's got that kind of vision and that insight, and then blessed with the ability to articulate it.
Jerry Jones:
You heard him talk about when he says it. I've sat there and really enjoyed with him talking about bread. We'd be out to eat and he would be talking about how you could tell the difference in the restaurants by how they serve their bread to initiate the meal. He's an interesting dialogue that goes along with it. But we're certainly proud of him. I don't know. We may have lost him his first year out with... We had a tacit understanding with the network as well as him, that if we need him, we'd bring him back off the broadcasting boot.
Josh King:
You've got the New York Giants flying into one AT&T way in Arlington for opening weekend, one of eight home dates this year. How does a home weekend unfold for you? What's the division of labor between you, the football staff, members of your family and the business to putting on a great show on Sunday?
Jerry Jones:
Well, first of all, we are proud to have that one game eight times a year. We like for them to be small Super Bowls. I wouldn't want the challenge of making it twice that number or three times that number just from the standpoint of what we do with the stadium. The stadium was built for television. In this sense, we could have had a wonderful stadium for about two-thirds of what I spent to build the stadium. It would have held and does hold 100,000 people. But instead of spending 800 million, I spent another 400 million and that was all spent for television in this sense. It was spent making the lobbies look like the lobby of the Ritz hotel. It was spent doing the digital board in the middle like it was Celine Dion's theater out in Las Vegas.
Jerry Jones:
All of those things were special to get Al Michaels or when he was doing it, John Madden or Cris Collinsworth to say, "Folks, not to the 100,000 in the stadium, but to the 25 million that are watching, "you ought to see this place." There's nothing like it. They create vicariously those 25 million in that stadium so that what we do at the stadium, the art and what we do in presenting the art in a way that it'll get the attention of the commentators, all of this is for them to tell the story to 25 million people. That's Cowboys.
Josh King:
Storytelling to 25 million people every week, 17 weeks ahead for the NFL season 2019, the 100th season of the national football league. I'm holding up four fingers, Jerry. That's what Coach Broyles would hold up to talk about getting to it. Whether thinking about the Cowboys in 2019 or Comstock Resources in the future of natural gas, I imagine you have enough gas in the tank for the fourth quarter.
Josh King:
It is. It is indeed. Thank you so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Jerry Jones:
Oh, yes. Thank you.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. If you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet us @ICEHousePodcast. Our show is produced by Theresa DeLuca and Pete Ash with production assistance from Ken Abel and Ian Wolf. I'm Josh King, your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Wish I was at AT&T Stadium. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE, nor it's affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor approves or endorse any of the content herein. All of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing here in constitution offered to sell a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.