The roar of the crowd. The glint of a Lombardi Trophy. The defiant, grinning shout: “How ’bout them Cowboys!” For decades, Jimmy Johnson’s image was etched in football lore with bold strokes of victory and swagger. But on the biggest stage of all, Super Bowl LIX, FOX Sports painted his legacy with a different brush—one dipped in the uncanny valley of artificial intelligence. What was meant as a soaring tribute instead left the legendary coach visibly torn up and viewers deeply disturbed, sparking a debate about technology, legacy, and the very soul of remembrance.

It started subtly enough during FOX’s sprawling pregame show. Fellow broadcasting icon Terry Bradshaw, Johnson’s close friend and decades-long travel companion aboard his private jet every Friday during the season, later recalled the moment on his podcast ‘To The Point’: “And if you watch our pregame show, they did an AI thing on him — it was pretty cool and really tore him up emotionally.” Bradshaw, who shares a bond forged over 31 years of nachos, beers, and brutal honesty in the Fox NFL Sunday Peanut Gallery, knew the weight of what he was seeing.

He even traced their connection back to the roots: “Anyway, I was actually recruited by Jimmy Johnson, head coach of the Cowboys and now with Fox. He recruited me; his first coaching job was at Louisiana Tech.” But this wasn’t a nostalgic highlight reel. FOX—aiming for cinematic grandeur—unveiled a roughly four-minute odyssey. It featured a digital Johnson, an AI ‘hyper-model,’ walking across the 100 yards of AT&T Stadium.

As he strode, he aged through his career: the young, fiery coach who turned around Oklahoma State (29–25–3 record); the architect of the Miami Hurricanes dynasty (52–9, 1987 National Champion); the savior who rebuilt the Dallas Cowboys from a 1–15 laughingstock into back-to-back champions (XXVII, XXVIII) with the audacious Herschel Walker trade and drafting the iconic Triplets—Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin.

De-aged AI Jimmy delivered lines. AI Terry even made an appearance. The technology, crafted by Hyperreal using 100-camera 3D scans, was cutting-edge. The effect? For many, profoundly unsettling.

Johnson was clearly moved. Visibly choked up on the broadcast, he managed a trademark quip about taking things ‘one day at a time,’ fueling the retirement speculation further. His emotional response was genuine, a testament to the powerful memories stirred—the Fiesta Bowl gamble that sealed the ’87 title, the guarantee before beating the San Francisco 49ers in the ’93 NFC Championship (We will win the ballgame, and you can put it in three-inch headlines), the calm adjustments that won Super Bowl XXVIII. This was a man reflecting on an unprecedented journey: the only coach to win both an NCAA National Championship and a Super Bowl, a feat later matched by Barry Switzer with the team Johnson built.

Weight of Johnson legacy & the limits of tech

Viewers flooded social media. Words like ‘creepy’, ‘disturbing’, and ‘weird’ trended. It felt less like a tribute and more like a digital séance, conjuring ghosts of glory days past with imperfect, almost-human-but-not-quite animations. The uncanny-valley effect was strong, reminiscent of the eerily smooth animation in films like ‘The Polar Express’. Lips didn’t quite sync; movements felt just slightly off. Some fans bluntly stated the segment was ‘embarrassing’.

Yet, the advanced AI, intended to immerse viewers in his legacy, became the story itself. It sparked an uncomfortable conversation: Does hyper-realistic AI, especially when depicting living legends in vulnerable moments, honor or inadvertently diminish? Does the pursuit of technological “wow” factor risk overshadowing the authentic human emotion it seeks to evoke?

FOX’s intentions were pure—a grand, innovative homage to a foundational figure in their 31-year NFL broadcasting history. As Bradshaw hinted, “But resilience came for me. The definition of it, or total understanding of it, was when I wanted something so bad and someone else got it.” The tribute aimed to capture Johnson’s own resilience and monumental achievements.

The tribute tore Jimmy Johnson up emotionally, yes. But the method, for many, tore at the fabric of how we connect with our sports heroes and their authentic, beautifully imperfect legacies. As Johnson himself later reflected on his Fox years, “The most fun I ever had in my career, that’s counting Super Bowls and national championships, was at Fox Sports.” That genuine joy, perhaps, is the hardest thing for any AI to replicate.