By Randy Galloway
rgalloway@star-telegram.com
If I had known this week there was going to be a sudden calendar roll back to 1994, the personal preference would have been at the gas pumps. A dollar and a dime was our cost, per gallon.
I don't speak for the vast world of CowNation, but it's safe to say that particular fandom would kill for a 1994 sudden calendar roll back while gladly paying the three-fifty pump prices of today.
The Dallas Cowboys, of course, were two-time Super Bowl champs and the title stampede looked as if it would never end.
Instead, out of nowhere, what we got this week was a cheap imitation of the way it was, football-wise, in 1994.
Jimmy and Jerry, back at it again, squabbling over who should have the most credit for the remarkable building of not only a Super Bowl champion, but a dynasty team.
Which also flips us back to the spring of 1994, when in an ego collision, Jimmy Johnson left town over exactly the same disagreement.
Then there was only Jerry.
Much has changed in the past 18 years in the Cowboys' world, changed dramatically for the worse. But there's still Jerry.
I'm not climbing in the middle of this latest spat, because there's no reason for even a debate. No reason to take sides.
Jerry and his ego both know the truth.
Jimmy was in charge of all things football from the day Jerry and Jimmy took over the franchise in 1989. Anyone in the local media who was around in those days knows this is the truth, and we know it because Jerry repeatedly told us it was the truth.
And anything involving football, from a low-end roster move to the trade of Herschel Walker, no one was asking Jerry for a football opinion. A financial opinion, yes, we asked. And certainly in the case of the Walker trade, there were financial considerations galore.
But on anything involving any area of football, the questions went to Jimmy. Because Jerry told us Jimmy was in total charge of that area.
With the first Super Bowl in 1992, that certainly changed. It was only then that Jerry started seeking more of the roster-building glory. And that's when the ego collision began building.
Even as we watched it take form, however, another Super Bowl was won the next season, and although we all could see a parting of the ways on the horizon, no one thought it would happen in the midst of a championship binge.
To this day, I'm shocked at the timing of the breakup, and both sides are to blame. But the breakup foundation was laid when Jerry went against his original game plan. He's the one who placed Jimmy in charge of all things football, and then wanted to take it back, or at least share it, 50/50. Jimmy's ego would have none of that.
In the many years since then, and again last week, Jerry has attempted to manufacture a story that presents himself as not just a partner in building that Super Bowl dynasty, but as the No. 1 shot-caller.
It's absurd. Jerry is delusional on this topic. But that's just Jerry, who took the lie to national TV before the Cowboys played in Atlanta last Sunday night.
What he said was nothing new. Jerry has done this for years. Jimmy, who now has a good relationship with Jerry, let it ride in the past without response. For whatever reason, Jimmy fired back strongly at Jerry this week.
Suddenly, it was exactly the way we left these two in 1994.
It was good this week for a laugh, but Jerry also walks in verbal quicksand every time he brings it up. The three Super Bowls of the '90s might now be his lone ownership/GM crutch, but he's not on solid ground in the most important area of all.
Jimmy has been gone for 18 years. The last Super Bowl was 16 years ago.
Since then, as The Man, totally alone at the top and in charge of all things Cow, Jerry can point to exactly two playoff wins.
(Jimmy also had his brief post-Jerry failure as head coach of the Dolphins. But in four seasons there, he did win two playoff games.)
Meanwhile, we are at the halfway point of what appears to be another rotten season under Jerry's watch. The Cowboys over 16 years have become one of the most dysfunctional franchises in football. Coaches come and go, but Jerry remains the constant, always and forever more, The Man.
Whether Jerry thinks he needed Jimmy or not, he's had 18 years on his own, and he's driven into the Valley Ranch ground what was once a model organization on a Super Bowl roll.
Telling us and telling the world about him being the football generalissimo of a long ago dynasty is Jerry's ego lie. But it's what's happening right here right now that traps him where it matters the most. The truth.
And it's now 16 years in this trap. Trapped in the truth of a football hell.
There was a sudden calendar roll back this week to the way it was around here in 1994. Jerry and Jimmy feuding, egos flaring, plenty of wasted verbal gas.
We'd all have been better off if the roll back had been to the dollar and a dime at the pumps.
Randy Galloway can be heard 3-6 p.m. weekdays on Galloway & Co. on ESPN/103.3 FM.Randy Galloway817-390-7697
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