“Obviously I wouldn’t dare speak for any of the other owners, much less in general about 31 other owners,” Jones said. “But as far as the Dallas Cowboys are concerned, you know where I stand.
“Our team knows where I stand on the issue, and that’s where we are.”
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Stephen Jones, the executive vice president of the Cowboys, told a local sports-talk radio station Thursday that Dallas players will stand during the national anthem — or else.
From the Star-Telegram: “ ‘If they want to be a Dallas Cowboy, yes,’ said Jones when asked if he was confident players will follow the team rule.”
Jerry Jones also stood by the team’s relationship Papa John’s pizza even after a recent report that founder John Schnatter had used a racial slur in an internal conference call last spring.
“(Those teams) do not have the same relationship that the Cowboys have with the Papa John’s business in Texas,” said Jones. “We own the (50) Papa John’s [stores] in Texas and feel strongly that our Cowboys are the face of Papa John’s and that judgment is warranted by what we’ve done over the last 15 years … The point is: We just want to work real hard. We literally have thousands of people who work in those stores.”
Schnatter apologized for his comments and stepped down as chairman, a decision he has since said was a mistake, but remains on the company’s board. Major League Baseball suspended its promotional partnership with the company and a number of sports teams cut ties to it.
Last November, Schnatter was in hot water when he linked his company’s earnings drop to the NFL’s sagging TV ratings and the anthem demonstrations. Schnatter, a contributor to Trump’s presidential campaign, criticized the NFL for its handling of the anthem controversy, saying it “should have been nipped in the bud a year and a half ago” and accusing the league of “poor leadership.” In February, the NFL and the pizza company agreed to end their leaguewide sponsorship agreement, with Pizza Hut becoming the official pizza sponsor of the league. Individual teams such as the Cowboys were left to evaluate their relationships with Papa John’s.
“That’s very unfortunate that that’s being addressed, unfortunate for the company and unfortunate for John,” Jones said of Schnatter’s recent controversy (via the Dallas Morning News). “I’m sure if he could do it over again, he’d like do-overs. But the bottom line is that the Cowboys and our relationships, we own those stores. It’s not an endorsement.”