The Dallas Cowboys Are America’s Favorite Reality Show

America’s favorite reality show is back! The Dallas Cowboys began training camp earlier this week, and as always, the off-field drama is overshadowing the actual football. Micah Parsons still doesn’t have a contract. Trevon Diggs had his feelings hurt. And players were catching strays left and right from the owner, who, once again, is talking way too much. And making no sense while he does it.

For most teams and their fans, training camp is a beautiful thing. It signals the start of another season where hope springs eternal. Camp is for competition and development. Learning about your team and gearing up for the season.

In Dallas, it’s just the next platform to make headlines and grab attention. A true real-life soap opera.

The Cowboys Are A Real-Life Soap Opera, And America Loves It

 Jerry Jones Is His Own Worst Enemy

Jerry Jones began training camp doing what he does best. Talking. His opening press conference alongside his son Stephen and head coach Brian Schottenheimer was particularly disastrous, even by his own lofty standards. Much of it centered around the contract saga of Micah Parsons—no surprise there—and the rehab absences of Trevon Diggs.

Look, we all want honesty from our sports figures. Boilerplate, cliché responses, while safe, are incredibly boring. And fans don’t want boring. But there are right ways and wrong ways to go about it. And Jerry just kind of always picks the wrong way. The man simply can’t help himself.

The only update fans need next is that the team has signed Parsons. Period. There is no more light to be shed on this until that happens. But Jerry doesn’t carry on that way. He’s going to answer any question asked of him. And as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, it will be a meandering, nonsensical monologue full of botched language and weird metaphors.

Jones continues to say that he does not deal with agents (or lawyers, though nobody asked about that), only the “principals.” When asked by Jon Machato of The Athletic whether he has actually spoken to Parsons’ agent, Jerry said:

“I’ve talked with people who have talked to him. I don’t necessarily talk to the people that are hired to do certain things. I talk to the principals 90% of the time.” This received quite a chuckle from the assembled media.

The Joneses And Micah Parsons Remain At An Impasse

Stephen Jones would go on to say that he’s the one who handles those things, but suggested the other side isn’t playing ball:

“At the end of the day, it [takes two]. You might be surprised where we might be and where they might have been, where they wanted to hold.”

In more straightforward terms: blame Micah’s camp.

It’s a risky public posture considering Parsons’ popularity with the fan base and his deft ability to work the court of public opinion. There’s just no version of this where the Joneses come out on top.

Parsons has done all the right things: He’s been visible, and he’s been showing up for his teammates. But Jerry can’t help needling.

“He was hurt six games last year,” Jones said. “Seriously, we’ve signed a player for the highest paid at the position in the league, and he got knocked out two-thirds of the year—Dak Prescott.”

Never mind the fact that it was four games, not six. But to throw your quarterback under the bus for no reason? I don’t get it.

This is how things tend to go in America’s favorite reality show. Even the most straightforward of decisions turns into a drawn-out saga full of unnecessary drama. Most teams in the league keep this in-house until they resolve things, or at least refrain from talking about it every chance they get. The Cowboys, on the other hand, can’t even get through the opening press conference of training camp without tripping all over themselves.

Trevon Diggs Got Fined—And Thrown Under The Bus

While the Parsons contract dominated a large portion of the press conference, the Cowboys did also find time to stir up drama with another key defensive player. They fined Trevon Diggs $500,000 for rehabbing in South Florida while recovering from another knee surgery.

This isn’t something that needed to go public. But of course, it did, and it was a further example of organizational tone-deafness.

“We expect a player paid like Trevon to be here all the time,” Jerry said. “We expect him to be leading. You’ve got to have some leadership about you.”

Stephen then matter-of-factly stated that the contract clearly outlined the penalty.

“The de-escalation is contractual,” he said. “Spelled out. So he understood when he decided he was going to train in South Florida, he understood what the consequences would be.”

Whether or not the fine is justified based on contractual language is irrelevant. In fact, I don’t care about the fine. The Cowboys made a public example of a player recovering from another major surgery, after already questioning his commitment to rehab the first time. The optics are brutal, and the sentiment is callous.

Jerry compared Diggs’ situation to another mercurial star, Deion Sanders, mentioning that Deion often resisted showing up for team workouts too. Sanders, of course, had the resume to push back. Diggs is still working to prove that his All-Pro 2021 season was no fluke, and now ownership has put him on notice before he’s healthy enough to take the field.

This is the kind of public airing of internal business that you only see in soap operas, and that high-functioning organizations avoid at all costs. There’s a time and place for accountability. At the podium on the day before training camp is neither.

Micah Parsons Responded