Cowboys' Jerry Jones responds to Dan Snyder's potential sale of Commanders: 'Testing the waters'
Dallas Cowboys team owner Jerry Jones isn’t “necessarily surprised,” he said, that Dan and Tanya Snyder are enlisting financial guidance regarding team ownership options for the Washington Commanders.
The Snyders hired Bank of America’s BofA Securities to “consider potential transactions,” they said Wednesday in a team statement.
The announcement came amid increasing pressure to sell the team, which has encountered complications and correlated investigations regarding a toxic workplace and financial impropriety, the latter spurring congressional hearings and most recently, a federal criminal investigation.
In October, Indianapolis Colts team owner Jim Irsay became the first of Snyder’s counterparts to publicly suggest voting on his removal. Irsay said he “believe[s] there’s merit to remove” Snyder. NFL protocol requires at least 24 of 32 team owners to support a forced removal.
Jones, speaking Friday in his regular-scheduled radio interview, discussed a broad range of outcomes for the Snyders’ transaction goals.
“He recently acquired a very significant portion of the team, about 40%, from his other partners,” Jones said on Dallas radio station 105.3 The Fan. “And at the same time he’s entertaining the building of a new stadium. The acquisition of the partnership interest, as well as the building of the new stadium, is going to require huge economic resources — almost unthinkable economic resources.
“These are times you sit down and start your noodling, so to speak, or try to figure out how you’re going to get there.
“So this doesn’t surprise me that he’s in a time of real planning, real thinking about how to manage the economic resources it takes to be where we want the Washington team to be."
Jones was subsequently asked: Was he saying Snyder is more likely to sell a minority stake in the team than divest entirely?
“It sounds like I’m saying that, but I really am saying I bet all options are on the table and then you see what might be possible,” Jones said. “That’s what I think this exercise is: Let’s look and see what our options are here, see where the big interest is that makes the most sense in their case, to the Snyders, and then go from there. It’s one thing to sit there at your table and draw up all your plans and figure out how you’re going to get it done financially, you and the mirror.
“In this case you need more, so he’s out testing the waters.”
The Snyders said in Wednesday’s statement that they “remain committed to the team, all of its employees and its countless fans to putting the best product on the field and continuing the work to set the gold standard for workplaces in the NFL.”
