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'Money Is The Root. ...' Of How Cuban Fuels The Mavs, Hicks Fuels The Rangers And Jerry Fuels The Cowboys
Mike Fisher -- DB.com
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.’’ – Dorothy Parker
A few years ago, Jerry Jones told me that he once bought an airplane sight unseen … but that he usually considers quite carefully the purchase of a pair of shoes. It’s all part of his personal way with dollars and sense; the Dallas Cowboys owner invested some $900 million of his own funds in the building of the team’s glorious new $1.2-billion Cowboys Stadium in Arlington … but I’ve personally seen him quiz his executive secretary Marilyn Love on the cost of the coffee filters and pencils used at the team’s Valley Ranch headquarters.
Jerry Jones, Tom Hicks and Mark Cuban are all exclusive Highland Park neighbors – and they belong to a couple of other exclusive groups as well. Fortune 500-level stuff, Forbes Magazine stuff, as well as the unofficial boys club made up of owners of professional sports teams.
This is not a time in America when money flows like water (heck, financial times are so clogged in America right now that not even water flows like water). Money very much affects the thinking of Messrs. Jones, Hicks (who owns the Dallas Stars and the Texas Rangers) and Cuban (who owns the Dallas Mavericks).
A trio of vignettes:
“I have enough money to last me the rest of my life. Unless I buy something.’’ – Jackie Mason.
This summer, one of Mr. Hicks baseball stars, Josh Hamilton, demonstrated a fondness for whipped cream that probably cost him a few million bucks. (That’s some cooooool whip.) Hamilton, credited with heroically battling the demonic hold that alcohol and crack cocaine have on him to become one of THE sports stories of the year in 2008, had himself a relapse in early 2009. The details were not revealed until Deadspin.com published photographed of Hamilton is various stages of drunken undress surrounded by a covey of honeys. What all happened that night? Josh was so crocked that he has since been apologizing and asking forgiveness for behavior he’s only guessing at.
What happens next? Mr. Hicks (or his eventual buyer) engages in a debate about whether he wants to pay an erstwhile star who is arguably teetering somewhere between on and off the wagon.
Logic insists that there was a reason Texas opted not to extend his contract in the spring. It was curious when it didn’t happen; dude got the cover of Sports Illustrated, was the star of the All-Star Game, heard his name chanted by the opposing team’s fans in places like Yankee Stadium, and wrote a triumphant best-selling book about his path to God’s glory. …
But now maybe we know why the Rangers didn’t make a monster financial commitment to Josh Hamilton.
Hicks has bigger financial fish to fry than this one player, of course. He is attempting to relieve himself of ownership of the Rangers (he plans on retaining the Dallas Stars) and in doing so has to find a delicate balance between
1 Spending the money to help the Rangers fulfill their theoretical potential.
2 Not spending in a way that would lock an interested buyer into a money pit.
3 Committing cash to a person, place or thing when Mr. Hicks might just be a tad short. (I’m not saying Mr. Hicks is broke; I’m just saying that last night I saw him in one of those “FreeCreditReportDotCom’’ TV commercials, singing while dressed like a pirate/waiter.)
The baseball fans who so want to believe Hamilton’s crack-to-riches story will continue to invest their money into the man. They buy the tickets, they buy the book, and when is “The Josh Hamilton Story’’ going to be made into a major-motion picture, anyway, because they will certain buy that?
The baseball fans seem to trust Josh Hamilton.
But it will be interesting to watch Hicks and the Rangers here. Do they trust him? Do they trust him enough to pay him?
Well, thanks to the Temptation In Tempe, maybe they won’t have to make that decision now. The Rangers have the option of simply showing up at arbitration every year with Josh on the other side of the table. A one-year deal for 2010 … and let’s try eating at “restaurants’’ that aren’t actually “taverns.’’ A one-year deal for 2011 … and maybe wife Katie should accompany you on some of these roadies … A one-year deal for 2012 and maybe when the book becomes a movie it will have a fully happy ending.
Josh’s wife, Katie, popped onto the DallasNews.com Rangers Blog after the Tempe incident came to light in August and she responded to her husband’s detractors. She was passionate and eloquent in speaking about her husband and her faith. At one point, though, she wrote this:
“Josh is in no way shape or form "chasing millions" that very thought or statement sickens my stomach. This job isn't about money, fame or "being a homerun king"...none of those things bring happiness and if that's what it was all about- neither Josh nor myself would be a part of it. What is IS about is glorifying God…’’
Well, yes. But this job IS about money, too. Otherwise, Josh would play church-league softball, coach a YMCA team and never have any reason to be in a tavern in Tempe. The job IS about money (in addition to glorifying God) because that’s what a job IS … an activity for which one gets paid money.
Anyway, in a twisted sense, Josh Hamilton’s foibles allow Tom Hicks to catch a break. Because now, the owner doesn’t have to sign the player to a five-year deal worth $10 million a season. … and Mr. Hicks will never have to reveal whether he would’ve done so. … or, money being as tight as it is, whether he even could’ve done so.
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.’’ – Jane Austen
“Sweeteners.’’
That’s what we all called Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s decade-long habit of making sure a trade went through by greasing the wheels with an extra $1 million or an extra $3 million to the swap partner.
The Bank of Cuban doesn’t do “sweeteners’’ much anymore.
Instead, the Mavs’ strategy has shifted in what I called “The Summer of Nuclear Winter,’’ when money is so tight – even for most NBA owners – that more than half the teams in the league accepted millions of dollars in NBA-arranged loans at the end of last season.
What Cuban is doing now is accumulating “chips.’’ The Mavs are spending less to acquire more. And they are doing it not by giving away money … and not even by trading away players. They are, rather, dealing in “chips’’ – expiring contracts, instant-expirings, super-expirings, half-and-half contracts – all created for the purpose of taking advantage of other franchise’s financial soft spots.
DallasBasketball.com has been a forerunner in exploring these unique contracts (and in giving them fun nicknames). Drew Gooden’s contract is listed as a $4.5 million deal, but if he’s traded before next calendar year, it’s only a $1.9 mil hit against Dallas’ cap. And it’s a $4.5-mil cap savings but a zero-dollar hit against his new team if they acquire and then release him. “The DUST Chip’’ (Dampier Ultimate Sign-and-Trade) can be used next summer to give $13 million of room to a team that is going to lose a free agent anyway. With The DUST Chip, the Mavs can acquire a stud free agent in exchange for only “dust’’ and change.
Sound fishy? The Mavs have worked the system so they can trade a bag of magic beans and get back an All-Star?
There are no guarantees. (See “The Buck Shot,’’ the contract of Greg Buckner, which could've been traded to give some other team about $5 mil in cap room but instead withered and died.) But the track record is established; the Mavs purposely wrote these contracts in this fashion, and so far with this strategy they are one-for-one: Dallas’ acquisition of four-time All-Star Shawn Marion was executed in exchange for “The Stack Chip,’’ an expiring contract that in the Transactions log basically reads, “Jerry Stackhouse traded for Shawn Marion.’’
That looks terribly lopsided. And it is … until you realize that what the Mavs really gave up for Marion was cap room … a new sort of “sweetener’’ that actually doesn’t cost Mark Cuban a penny.
“Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.’’ – Donald Trump.
Jerry Jones is a wildcatter. He’s “Big Balls In Cowtown,’’ as Bob Wills or George Straight or Asleep At The Wheel or somebody twangs it. He borrowed and leveraged his way to the purchase of the Cowboys and the lease on Texas Stadium back in 1989, a risky move at the time for a franchise that was seen by the public as a “glamorous’’ one but that was, according to the books, barely afloat in financial lard.
Jones took all the risks (his bankers would argue, foolishly), Jones trimmed all the fat (his ex-employees would argue, ruthlessly), and he re-invented the franchise on the field and off.
Now he’s trying to re-invent it again … but this time, while he put up a great deal of his own money, he’s also got all the leverage.
Back in December, the Cowboys sought to borrow $350 million to help make the new stadium work. It was maybe the worst month in the worst year in one of the worst credit environments in the history of the civilized planet.
Financially, Jones ended up on top.
A few months ago, there was much speculation that our trying financial times would make it very difficult for the Cowboys to fill their gargantuan building for home games. That would mean the games wouldn’t be telecast locally, which would be a financial and PR disaster of the sort this team last dealt with back in 1989 and 1990, when the tickets were so undesirable and the weekly blackout so ever-looming that Jones arranged with Kroger’s to come to the rescue every Thursday to gobble up the tickets on the cheap so the games could be on TV.
Now, the Cowboys are saying the tickets at the new building are 95-percent sold.
Financially, Jones is ending up on top.
At the team’s preseason home opener – the unveiling of Cowboys Stadium for its prime purpose of football – Jones’ team beat the visiting Titans and garnered rave reviews in most every department. Oh, there is a charge for tailgating and the parking is outrageous and even the inexpensive $29 “Party Passes’’ seem both a chance for budget-minded Cowboys fanatics to soak in the atmosphere as they do a chance for Jerry to charge people $29 to not sit down. But really, there was only one oddity, one pimple, one WTF moment:
When the Titans punter clanged a kick off the JumboJerry -- the impossibly massive four-sided TV screen 
that hovers over the field like the Prawns’ spaceship hovers over Johannesburg in “District 9’’ – the officials and the whole NFL scrambled for answers. What is that? A ground-rule double? A do-over? Play it where it lies?
As I write this, the league is still negotiating changes. And maybe the NFL will get its way. The suspension will be further altered. The Cowboys want their onrushing special-teamers blocking punts, not a TV screen blocking punts.
Of course, the parameters of the existing JumboJerry suspension were approved by the NFL. And when U2 came here last week, and there was a conflict between where Bono wanted to put the stage and where Jerry had already put his TV set?
If there are demanded changes in the future, somebody is going to have to pay for those sort of things … and inasmuch as this is not a time in America when money flows like water, that somebody won’t be Jerry Jones.
Because financially, Jerry Jones is ending up on top.
“Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.’’ – Groucho Marx
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