When Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys, it was nothing more than a financial gamble. Yet, with the elusive dream of being an NFL owner finally within reach, he didn’t step back. Jones went all-in, a move that he calls truly impossible in the current landscape.

“Control was going to be auctioned off,” Jerry Jones said of the 1989 debt-ridden Cowboys on The Gambler Podcast. “The league really wanted an answer and didn’t want to take the team over. So, they didn’t exactly look under every napkin for me, or check everything out.

“Normally, what keeps you from doing something you’re not financially eligible to do is, they just won’t let you through the door. I literally got to get in the saddle without being financially qualified. I don’t believe anybody would have ever been able to do it before or since then. How did it happen? It happened because Texas was so down and out. Buildings were empty, businesses, oil, gas, banks were going broke right and left. If that was not the case, somebody would have stepped up and bought the team.”

Ironically, the purchase didn’t come without hurdles for Jones either.

For starters, the businessman was severely short of the original asking price of $200 million by then-owner Harvey Bum Bright. It also didn’t help that the family accountant summed up the deal as “financial suicide”. However, about six weeks later, as the Cowboys fell 3-13 to end the season, so did Bright’s aspirations.

The parties eventually settled on $140 million ($65 million for the team and $75 million for Texas Stadium). It was the first time anyone was paying more than $100 million for a sports franchise, that too, for one that was already headed toward doom.

Notably, when Jones took over, the Cowboys were losing $1 million per month, almost $30,000 per day. One advisor even cautioned that he would lose $25 million a year by 1992. Yet, the money-minded businessman was willing to think about everything but the money.

Jones gave up his retirement fund, an undisclosed portion of the $175 million sale of his gas and oil company, Arkoma, with Mike McCoy. Paying $90 million in cash, he also gave up every last penny, putting everything he owned as collateral, and borrowed the rest.

“I was blindly intoxicated with the idea of being involved with sports and the NFL,” was Jones’ only reasoning behind the risk, as he acquired 13 per cent of the team from the FDIC and the rest from Bum Bright.

Part of the purchase also included $15 million of debt, including money owed in deferred contracts to players. The result? The new owner receiving a stern call from his father two weeks later.

“I don’t care whether you do it by mirrors, smoke or what, you’ve got to make it look successful or you will be known as a loser. You won’t be able to do anything else for the rest of your life.”

Well, truth be told, Jerry Jones hasn’t been required to do anything else in life. The Cowboys’ $13 billion valuation is enough evidence that the 83-year-old did something right.