Saturday, February 14, 1998

Jerry Jones kept media hopping until the very end

By Barry Horn / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS -- Jerry Jones could have upstaged Super Bowl hype nationally had he named a new coach in late January. Earlier in the month, Jones would have made the arena election a media afterthought locally had he been quicker in naming the fourth coach in Cowboys' history.

But by naming Chan Gailey the successor to Barry Switzer on Thursday, Jones had to be content with becoming the focus of Dallas-Fort Worth media attention at nobody else's expense.

Still, once more, we have been reminded of the media-drawing power of the Cowboys.

When Jones introduced Gailey to a packed Valley Ranch news conference a few minutes after 2 p.m., the moment was captured live by three television stations -- KDFW, WFAA and KTVT. Every AM radio station with a microphone was also in attendance. Nationally, ESPN2 and Fox Sports Net carried the news conference.

Of all the usual suspects, only KXAS didn't go live to Valley Ranch, preferring instead to let sports anchor Scott Murray announce the news so the station could get right back to the soap opera "Another World."

KXAS had interrupted its soap operas on Tuesday and Wednesday for news of another sort and wasn't about to risk facing the wrath of its viewers again.

"I don't want to make Diane Zamora sound more important than the Cowboys but ... ," said Doug Adams, KXAS' general manager.

The station fell into line with its competitors at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. when all four major network affiliates led their newscasts with Gailey.

"I think the story is that big," said WFAA sports anchor Dale Hansen. "The Dallas Cowboys hiring a coach sure beats the heck out of some snowboarder failing a drug test. It bumps all other news of the day back to a distant second."

The local media should be grateful that Jones' search mercifully has come to an end. News organizations have not distinguished themselves in covering the story.

From the beginning, Jones warned that unless he was the source of information for a story, that story probably would be inaccurate.

Yet, we were subjected to a multitude of speculative stories that in the end were mostly wrong. Every local news organization -- print, television and radio -- desperately wanted to be first with the new coach story. Failing that, they wanted to be first with something. Throw in ESPN, as well as CNN/SI, and stories flowed. Sometimes they were even right.

Over time, it had been reported that Terry Donahue was the leading candidate. It also was reported that George Seifert and Sherman Lewis were leading candidates. Not once did Jones, the one-man search and hiring committee, confirm a story.

And what exactly does the phrase "leading candidate" mean?

Give Jones credit. True to his word, the search went on with no apparent leaks from him. Sure, he paraded potential coaches before the cameras and notebooks for his personal media fix, but never did the only really reliable source for the story tip his hand. Even the usual suspects when it comes to Valley Ranch leaks were not made privy to Jones' thinking.

The biggest break in the story finally came early Thursday morning when KDFW's Mike Doocy and a camera crew caught Gailey coming off Jones' private jet before he was taken to Jones' home.

"I think to some extent the media interest in the story lessened as it dragged on," Doocy said. "It was a tough story for television, with our limited manpower, because it involved a lot of standing around and waiting. We decided that the story was worth throwing all our resources at."

It wasn't the only time Doocy was in the right place at the right time.

Doocy, who works on the Cowboys' radio network, has heard whispers that he was helped by the Cowboys organization.

"I guarantee you that if that was the case, I would've been closer than 75 feet to Jerry's plane and our tape wouldn't have been so grainy. We worked hard; it was as simple as that."

Perhaps it was only fitting that Doocy's tape on his legitimate scoop that Gailey was back in town wasn't sharp. It simply reflected the job done on the story by most of the media.

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(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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