For Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, battling radio and television broadcasters isn’t new.
Jones doesn’t mind fielding tough questions from members of the media. He even encourages it as the team owner and general manager.
He just doesn’t want it from radio and television rights holders.
On Tuesday, Jones got into a spirited interview with the hosts of the “Shan & RJ” show on 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM), the team’s current rights holder.
During the interview that drew national attention, Jones became agitated when asked about some of the roster decisions the club has made, at one point appearing to threaten to fire the hosts.
Shan Shariff, RJ Choppy and Bobby Belt, who conducted the interview, weren’t made available to speak about the drama for this story, and management for The Fan didn’t respond to a request for comment. Jones also wasn’t available for comment.
Longtime Dallas broadcaster Dale Hansen understands the delicate balance between working for a rights holder and asking difficult questions.
“What Shan and RJ did isn’t breaking new ground here,” said Hansen, who was taken off Cowboys’ broadcasts in the 1990s for comments he made about the team. “It’s been done. Quite honestly, he’s usually a little more subtle about it.”
Jones’ remarks during the interview about removing the radio hosts received criticism.
“This is not your job. Your job isn’t to let me go over all the reasons that I did something and I’m sorry that I did it,” Jones said during the interview. “That’s not your job. ... I’ll get somebody else to ask these questions, men. I’m not kidding. You’re not going to figure out what the team is doing right or wrong. If you are, or any five or 10 like you, you need to come to this [NFL] meeting that I’m going to today with 32 teams here, you’re geniuses.”
Not a first
Whether Jones has the power to fire someone working for a rights holder is complex. The hosts are typically paid by the stations, but history suggests Jones has called for firings before.
In 1994, Jones fired longtime Cowboys’ play-by-play announcer Brad Sham from the owner’s television show after he accused Sham and then-Cowboys coach Barry Switzer of lying about the team.
“We tell you what’s going on,” Sham said of himself and fellow analyst Hansen during a pregame show that season. “Bulletin. What Jerry Jones and Barry Switzer say is going on isn’t always what is going on.”
Sham was also upset about the actions of Switzer after an on-the-air confrontation with Hansen, then the lead sportscaster at Ch. 8 (WFAA-TV). Sham said Switzer owed Hansen an apology for his actions.
“Barry Switzer crossed the line in my judgment,” Sham said at the time.
Sham remained with the team until the end of the 1994 season, leaving to broadcast Texas Rangers games. Sham returned in the Cowboys’ play-by-play role in 1998 and hasn’t looked back. Sham is so revered that the radio booth at AT&T Stadium is named after him.
“I never got one word out of my mouth,” Sham says now of when he returned in 1998, “and Jerry calls me into his office and says, ‘We’re thrilled to have you back. This is where you belong.’ "
However, Jones didn’t stop the removal of Hansen from his role late in the 1996 season and apparently prevented a return years later. When the Cowboys were working on a deal for their games to be broadcast on KTCK-AM (The Ticket), Hansen was doing a twice-a-week radio show on the station. Hansen said Cowboys’ officials went to station management asking for him not to work any pre- and postgame shows. Hansen, whose contract was expiring at the time, left to work for an ESPN Dallas radio station.
“They had to make a choice between me and the Cowboys and that’s an easy choice to make,” Hansen said.
Hansen and the Cowboys’ issues go back to the 1990s.
In December 1996, Hansen told The Dallas Morning News he was planning to leave his position broadcasting games for KVIL-FM with two games remaining in the regular season.
Station officials fired Hansen for not informing them of his departure. Hansen worked Cowboys games for 12 years and was a long-time critic of the Cowboys and Jones.
Over the years, Jones hasn’t fired any radio play-by-play announcers or analysts from Cowboys’ games. He has, however, gotten into heated interviews with reporters independent of the team and with talk show hosts.
The flagship
The Cowboys have a multi-year deal with The Fan. Jones, his son Stephen, the team’s executive vice president, and head coach Mike McCarthy do weekly shows.
Their participation is part of the contract with the station, a person briefed on the deal told The News.
Whether Jones was serious about removing the hosts from asking future questions is up for interpretation.
A high-ranking team official said Jones’ comments were “meant to be figurative comment, not literal.”
The same day Jones got into it with the talk show hosts, he arrived at the NFL owner’s meetings in Atlanta. When reporters asked to speak with him before heading into a meeting Jones said while laughing, “I’ll pass or do you want me to chew your ass out?”
Interviews with team officials, whether with a coach or someone in personnel, can be tricky. It’s a balance of asking tough, probing questions vs. softer ones.
Over the years, Jones’ interviews on local radio and television stations have become combative.
During training camp, Jones conducts one-on-one interviews with the local television stations. Broadcasters are free to ask any question they want, but there was an exception in the summer of 2018. Team officials asked the local broadcasters not to ask Jones about NFL players kneeling during the national anthem in support of quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protest against police brutality. Fox 4 sports anchor Mike Doocy declined to interview Jones under those conditions.
Jones is the only known owner among the four major sports to conduct interviews with reporters after games. Jones hasn’t talked to the media after road games in a few years, however.
Jones talks to the media twice a week on The Fan and is scheduled to do his normal spot Friday morning.
The power Jones commands as one of the more powerful owners in sports isn’t lost on the people who’ve interviewed him in the past.
Broadcasters who work for rights holders of teams walk a tightrope while interviewing people who work for the clubs. A majority of the broadcasters are paid by the stations and not the teams. Yet, the team has major influence when it comes to who broadcasts games.
“It’s hard as hell,” Hansen said. “Everybody in the business tries to deny it. But it’s just like CBS with the Masters. Yes, you work for CBS but you only work for CBS as long as the Masters says you can.”
Sham doesn’t back down from his comments in 1994 but admits, “I made it personal and that’s across the line.”
Sham later said: “My experience is, yes there’s a balance but it’s not one you can’t navigate and in my experience, the line that you have to be careful about crossing is making it personal. So the one thing that I have tried all my working life to do is be fair.”
In the aftermath of the contentious radio interview, Jones hasn’t backed down. In an interview with USA Today he compared what occurred with Shariff, Choppy and Belt to another duo: “I’ll tell you what: Hansen and Brad had to take a leave when they went too far, one way or another.”
On the radio, Choppy said he had 31 unread text messages and five million direct messages on social media he hadn’t opened. Belt said he had 72 unread text messages and “a lot of conversations with people. What do you think that was?’ It was an odd thing for all the pointed questions he’s got over the years, I felt like a mild one to give the reaction that he did.”
Shariff said he couldn’t remember the question that set it off.
“I blacked out,” he said joking.
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