You're listening to the downbeat on ninety seven to one the Freak. How about
color five? Right now? You'll want a pair of tickets to see Steve
Bye and Joe Satriani at the Music Call at fair Park. Call it five
May fourth, Yeah, Color one, Yeah, color three, I'm changing
it. It's officially caller number three. Boy Kevin doesn't like his games challenge,
does he? Oh, he puts a lot into him. He's protective
of his little games. Interested in fact, there's a good point to that
to what what collar number? It doesn't matter. I mean, I'm just
wondering if there's actually five people, yes, out there that dude, it's
the guys, Joe and Steve. Yeah, but it's also not nineteen eighty
seven anymore either. Do they just both wail on guitars? Is that what
the whole show? Oh? Yeah? Are there any lyrics? They'll take
turns, cutting heads, they'll solosh old story, the story with their guitars.
Yeah, and take you on a journey. We'll speak with their music.
You can be there, Caller three. If you're the first, third
or fifth caller third. We have to be clear. We'll get in trouble.
Yeah, there's a lot of rules one on this right now. We
got to abide by the promotional rules. I know one pair of tickets today
caller three, yep, pair Park of Music Hall. Good place to see
a show. Oh. In the break we're talking about movies. Ben and
skin Show will be doing mcgroober at the Alamo Draft House. Oh yes,
and they're going to do the Denton one KFBR three nine two. Can I
make an admission? Never saw macgoober, never saw mcgroober, and I have
been told to see it by Ben Rogers and my friend Kent for a long
time. They're I gotta see it soon. If you saw my vanity plate
that I had for a year, which was KFBR three nine two, you
would not know what you were seeing Hunt. Neither we do wouldn't know.
I haven't seen the movie either. Gods, you guys have never seen Really
you should go? Are you gonna go? I love the sketch or the
skit on SNHL. It's funny. I mean, is that sketch continued for
an hour and a half. It's just a bumbling mcguiver. Yeah, And
I don't know that I see it now that I look at it, I
don't know that I see it on the website, so maybe I shouldn't have
announced that. But I don't know if it's official or not. I don't
know anything. But Caller three gets to go see Steve Vay and Joe Satrianna
and listen to Ben and Skin today because they have a big surprise announcement that
they were excited to make. I think it did. I sort of got
heart. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be a really cool announcement.
I sort of got I saw some some some artwork about it on something.
This is the problem though, with having too many apps and too many things
that we're supposed to be like control of. It's so hard to know what
that's what anymore sounds to me like your mouth throw to check that your ass
can't cash. Yeah, huh is that how it goes? Yes, Tiger
Woods is live on the range at Augusta. We have collegs live from the
range. Cat Well, he's just holding a wedge. He's got to make
the cut here, Danny, and he is about to swing and give a
review. He's in position and he has hit the golf ball all right,
he's not wincing in pain. Good you taking Tiger to win it all.
No, I'm not taking Tiger to win it all. To make the cut,
though, Okay, maybe that'll be our He's playing for something this week,
to set the record of twenty four made cuts. But I don't know
if our guest cares about that. He might. He does. Has written
two golf books. Absolutely it is ESPN senior writer New York Times best selling
author Don Van, not a junior. How are you doing, Don?
It's not even Nata I almost probably I didn't answer you. Yeah, Hey,
Donald, we got you. Nope, So there we are. How
you doing doing great? Guys? How you doing? We're doing awesome?
Man? All right, only because we just talked about it. Tiger woods
make the cut, not make the cut this week, Augusta National. Uh,
you can't bet against Tiger. He'll make it. He'll be what it'll
be twenty five, I think, right, twenty four, twenty four to
twenty five. I know it's the record twenty five. He's tied twenty three
record couples and write twenty four. Gary, so you think, yes,
I guess he is at the max level experience, But good god, he
just doesn't play withdraws. When he does play and he's so beat up.
Man, I hope you're right. Well, we'll all be rooting for him
for sure. So you're writing this book, this Jerry Jones book, and
I guess I've got a million questions about this. My first question is how
do you write a book about Jerry Jones and keep it under ten thousand pages?
That is going to be a challenge, for sure. You got to
keep the book, you know, probably one hundred to one hundred and twenty
thousand words. That's about a four hundred page book. Can't go longer than
that. It'll just look intimidating to people. That is definitely a challenge.
Jerry has lived a very full life, as we all know, and he's
eighty one years old and hasn't slowed down. So I'll do the best I
can to tell his story and tell people new things. That's the big challenge,
guys, is to I'm an investigative reporter by trade, and one of
the great challenges of this book, besides the length, is to try to
reveal new things about Jerry, things that nobody knows about. And so that's
what I'm setting out to do. Well, I've got a million questions as
well, don Okay, So how would you describe what this book is?
Is this a by a full biography of the life of Jerry? Is it
a portion of his life? And is this also an authorized biography by Jerry
Jones. It's a full biography. So I'm going to go back to Jerry's
childhood, and his years in high school and in college at Arkansas, and
you know, and and his years you know, in the oil and gas
industry when he when he made a lot of money and then lost almost all
of it and then made another fortune back enough money to buy the Cowboys.
So I'm going to go back into that past of Jerry. It is an
unauthorized biography. Jerry is not somebody who I think he's going to cooperate with
me. In fact, I feel pretty certain he'll cooperate with me in the
sense that he'll sit down with me and give me time. But it is
an unauthorized biography. It's not the same as the Netflix doc that Jerry is
doing. That's an authorized documentary that Jerry is doing with Netflix, that docuseries.
This is going to be a little bit different from that. Okay.
That makes me very happy to hear, because I find that in most cases,
the authorized biography tends to have the narrative controlled by the subject. And
I love that you, being such a great investigative reporter and researcher, that
you're going to have, I think, a more honest take on the overall
trajectory of his life. Now he is going to cooperate with you. I
have no doubt. Does that kind of present a slippery slope? I guess
I'm kind of asking what's your relationship with Jerry? Because historically you have been
at the forefront of a lot of unearthing some things that may not put Jerry
in his you know, a family in a most favorable light. What's your
relationship with him when it comes to stuff like this, considering the history of
the things that you've written about him and the Cowboys. Well, ten years
ago, actually ten years ago this summer, I spent the summer pretty much
with Jerry Jones and doing a in depth profile of him for ESPN. It
was a TV piece as well as a lengthy long form piece entitled Jerry Football
that a lot of people around our business believe was the best portrait of him
and uh and since then, we have a we have a pretty good relationship.
He certainly is not like some of the more recent stories I've done about
him. But I think that if you ask Jerry what he thought of thought
about my work and thinks of me, I think he'd probably say that I'm
I'm tough but fair and that I'm down the middle, and uh that you
know, that's what I'm going to do with this book. Uh. If
Jerry cooperates and I agree with you, I expect that he will and give
me time and sit down with me, h and answer my questions probably more
than once. You know, I'm He's not the only person I'm going to
talk to. I'm going to do, already done dozens of interviews and we'll
do more than a hundred when it's all said and done. And I'm going
to try to do the best, most honest portrait of Jerry Jones that has
ever been written. That was the goal I set for myself when I did
that profile ten years ago. And if you go back and read that,
there were things in that profile that Jerry didn't love that I reported on.
So you know, my goal is to just do the best book, the
most honest book, the most down the middle book about Jerry Jones again,
as Danny said, you're one of the most in depth writers on some of
the things he's done. Do you get blowback just through third parties or through
the media, or does Jerry himself or some associate or henchman for lack of
a better word, or lawyer contact you when you release one of your expose
as oh, I hear it from everybody, including Jerry. I've heard directly
from Jerry on certain things, but certainly the people around him, his communications
people, lawyers, you know, I will hear from them. But for
the most part, even the tough stories. I did a story just a
couple of years ago about the cheerleader's voyeurism scandal involving Rich Dalrymple. That was
a story, certainly that was not beloved at the Star. And yet what
the feedback I heard is that people there, you know, thought it was
fair. It was a down the middle portrait of a two point four million
dollar settlement made to four young women who claimed that they were spied on by
the former top communications guy who'd been with Jerry since nineteen ninety, Rich Dalrymple,
who retired just a week before my story was published. And so I
think that readers can expect that kind of coverage from this book. You know,
I've been doing this thirty five years. I've been at ESPN since twenty
twelve. And the book about Jerry is it's about Jerry Jones's life, but
it's also about Jerry Jones's influence with the National Football League. One of the
big motivating factors for me and telling and writing this book is telling that story.
Jerry has played an outsize role in the astonishing success of the NFL through
his vision and through his business acumen. And at the same time, I'm
going to weigh out against nearly thirty years of futility as general manager of the
Cowboys, not even making it to the title the championship by the conference championship
game since nineteen ninety five, so that will also be measured. That's a
story that of course is very familiar to everybody in Dallas, but that will
also obviously be part of the book because that's part of Jerry's story. Best
Selling author Don Van Atta joining us here on ninety seven to one too.
I want to expound a little bit on what Mikey just asked you. When
you do hear blowback, when you do get feedback from you, said Jerry
himself, What is the nature of the feedback if it is maybe negative?
Is it is it them challenging the facts that you presented, or is it
essentially an emotional response lots of don what are you doing writing this stuff about
us? Man? Yeah, I mean, I'm just kind of curious of
what that dynamic might look like when when you hear back from the Jones camp.
I don't think a single fact I've ever written has been challenged by Jerry
directly. I think it's much more in the second part of your question of
hey, what are you doing? Did you have to go there? Did
you have to do that? It's it's more like that, you know,
Jerry generally has pretty favorable coverage or he's used to it. Certainly he gets
a lot of criticism, but that's commentary. But it's more in that second
camp of man, did you have to go did you have to go that
far? Did you have to do that? And I was like, well,
yeah, Jerry, that's that's what the facts are. That's sort of
what my response is, which I think he accepts, and I mean I
have a sense from Jerry that he respects what I do, and even though
this is an unauthorized biography that you know, I don't think that. I
think the expectation that I have is that Jerry will spend time with me,
and already I have spent so much time with him and have talked with him
about every aspect of his life, going all the way back to his childhood
and his mom and dad, and growing up in North Little Rock and playing
high school football, and his college experiences, his vision for the NFL,
you know, almost buying the San Diego charters and being talked out of it
by his dad. A lot of that stuff's familiar, but Jerry and I
have gone very in depth in these different moments in his life, and so
I'm excited. I think that I think that the book, my hope for
the book, my ambition for the book is quite large. I wanted to
tell a lot of new things about Jerry's life, but also a lot about
the making of the National Football League and how this guy who you know,
he had a dream in the eighties to actually it started when he was in
college in the sixties, to eventually own a National Football League franchise, and
to finally do it, and to do it on his terms is a fascinating
American story that I'm really excited to tell. I would say, I mean,
to me, it seems like you have as much access or are as
close as you as anybody without being in his inner circle or family would have
access to a lot of information about him in your conversations. Would you say
that there are any details anything that he has told you that he says,
Look, don I know what you're doing. This is not to be written
about. Is there information that you have that you are literally not willing to
go there, whether it be because out of an ethical connection or because Jerry
has specifically told you, hey, this is off the record. Well off
the record, I mean, you're have to be two different questions. One
is whatever I find out, and if it's truthful and it's accurate, I'm
going to report. I think that Jerry and the people around him know that.
Certainly, if a source says off the record to me, it means
off the record, and I respect that. And there have been times in
my relationship with Jerry, like a lot of sources around the National Football League
or beyond, we'll say off the record, and that means off the record.
But there's no area that is sort of off limits. There's no agreement
like that. That's the nature of an unauthorized book. If I were doing
an authorized book, then the answer would probably be very different that, yes,
this is authorized, we can't go into this aspect or that aspect.
That's the agreement we have. There's no agreement like that, Jerry. I
think is as I say, my expectation is sit down with me, hopefully
multiple times as I'm as I'm reporting and as I'm gathering facts to talk about
various moments and and and and and. Yeah, there's there's no agreement like
that that there's some area that I can't go into. This is Don Van
Natta, junior of Well ESPN, Senior writer, New York Times best selling
author and one of the best, most incredible writers and authors of our time.
I know, it's always fascinating. I mean, you're the guy who
who taught us that Jerry likes Johnny Walker Blue, you know, is a
great fun fact that is stuck around from ten years from that piece up.
My question is you're talking about your book and keeping it four hundred pages so
it's not too big and not intimidating from a sales standpoint. When you're writing.
This is almost like editing a movie, Like you could have six hundred,
seven hundred pages and you gotta chop something out or how does that even
work? It is? It is, it is. Uh, there's a
lot of choices to make about you know, how I want to write the
book and what moments and what aspects of Jerry's life that I want to focus
on. And you know, I have a I have a pretty good outline.
I mean, obviously it could change as I'm doing the reporting and I've
begun writing, and I have a pretty good vision for the arc of how
I want to tell the story. But it is like that, it's impossible
with somebody who's been on the planet for eighty one years to get into every
single moment, every single season, every single choice that Jerry has made.
So I have to make choices in the narrative about how to try to tell
that story. But as I said, you guys, I want to focus
a lot on Jerry as owner of the team and as visionary as one of
the owners of the thirty two who helped build the NFL into what it is,
but also you know Jerry's other businesses that he's been in that intrigues me.
Legends the hospitality and stadium company. You know, Jerry is involved and
still involved in the oil and gas industry with Comstock Resources. So you know,
Jerry's life today beyond the Cowboys and how he conducts business is something that
intrigues me that you don't see a lot and about, and you know,
and how he built his fortune is something that I'm very very interested in and
going back and tracing that and explaining to people how he had the money to
buy the team from bum Bright in nineteen eighty nine fo one hundred and fifty
million dollars than a record and it's kind of mind boggling that the team is
now worth probably you know, nine and a half ten billion is the estimate,
but Jerry could probably get fifteen billion dollars for the Cowboys today if he
were to sell it. And that's just an astonishing success story. What makes
Jerry tick, you know how he's always obsessed with making the Cowboys relevant.
You know, back in twenty fourteen when I did that profile, he wanted
to draft you guys will remember Johnny Manziel. He thought Johnny Manziel would guarantee
the Cowboys relevance for a decade, and we all know what happened to Johnny
Manziel, what a bust he turned out to be and would have been for
the Cowboys, and maybe one of the most embarrassing picks Jerry ever would have
made his general manager if he hadn't been talked out of that pick in real
time. And so is the way he's constantly focused on making sure the Cowboys
are relevant despite the fact the America's team they get the best ratings of any
team no matter what they do on the field. Is just a remarkable story.
And how he has made that happen is something I really want to try
to explain, delve into and explain. Yeah, Don Van Natt, I
can't think of anybody better to write that story. And it's certainly worthy because
you're right, the positives are pretty incredible too. But around here, you
know, we hear a lot of the strange negative so we are obviously curious
about those, but whenever it comes out, it will fly off the shelves
here in DFW. While we have you on, I have to ask you.
I'm a Miami native too. I know you used to work for the
Miami Herald and Don Van Natta. You've probably told the story thousands of times,
but I've never heard it. He was sent by Harold editors to cover
Hurricane Andrew, stayed in a comfort in that was destroyed by one hundred and
sixty five on our wins while you were there, nearly lost your life.
If you could and in a minute or two, as dumb as that is,
tell us that story. Please. Yeah. We was fit the kid
reporter as a young reporter to Miami Herald was my first job, and the
Herald sent reporters all over then Dade County, Miami to cover the storm.
We didn't know where the storm was going to hit back then in nineteen ninety
two, and Hurricane Andrew was this monster category five storm, and I went
to a comfort in motel with my then girlfriend Lizette Alvarez, who was a
Herald reporter who's now my wife of nearly thirty years, and a photographer named
Carlos Guerrero. And the comfort in motel off of us one literally got torn
apart by these winds. We were running from room to room as the roof
got torn off of various hotel rooms. It was the three of us and
six other guests and a motel manager who knew once the eye of the storm
was over the motel for us to move on the other side. He had
been through a hurricane in New Warrant. I knew the winds were going to
shift, and I think it saved our life because we moved to the other
side when the wind shifted, and all of the rooms on the side that
we're in were all torn apart. The roof was torn off of the entire
side of the motel. There were only a few rooms left and we were
in one of them. And there was one point where myself and another guests
were holding up felt like we were holding up the bathroom with our bare hands.
So it was extremely scary. And then when it was over, though,
it was a journalist dream because I was asked by the Herald to write
a first person's story of surviving that storm that appeared on the front page of
the Miami Herald, and I wrote it on one of those little trash eighty
computers, literally in the husk of that motel. And it was a good
thing for my career because just a couple of years after that, the New
York Times called and hired both myself and my wife at the age of thirty
to go up to the New York Times for sixteen years before I joined ESPN.
But it was a very scary moment. I appreciate you asking me about
it. I haven't told that story in a while, but it was.
It's pretty amazing. Yeah, no, that is fascinating. All right,
don van Natta. We'll let you go. Man. We can do this
for hours on end, just on Jerry alone. But hell, all your
other books incredible successes, and we know this one will be a success as
well. Is it called The Star? Is that what we're going with.
Yes, that's what we're going with right now. That's the working title,
and I think it works, I hope. So anyway, what do you
guys think of it? I loved it right when I heard it, and
I told these guys and they're like, oh, is that the title?
And then yes, it fits on multiple all levels. I think, yeah,
for sure. Yeah, this thing is going to soar off of shelves.
Man, you're you're going to have another hit on your hands, no
doubt. Well, thank you, guys. I appreciate the support and I
look forward to talking with you guys when it comes out. Yea, sir,
there he goes, Don Van Natta Junior man, thanks for your time.
Cool, thanks guys, you good dude. There you go. Yep,
if he read something, if you know that he wrote it, you
immediately go okay, gotta make time and read this. It's cool that it
seems like last how many years, it's turned into that where it's like,
oh, something came out about Jerry Jones. Oh really, so what is
it Tuesday? Wait? No, Don Van Natta's got a story dropping.
Yeah, oh you know it's gonna be deeper and yeah, good get man.
That's a cool, good stuff for sure. Cool. Yeah, and
we'll compound it with Dusty Sleigh tomorrow. Yeah, Danny Danger's Morning News.
Well, let's follow up some award winning winning journalism with some more award winning
journalism with this tease, did Ricky Martin get a pant full of bone at
a Madonna concert? Stick around and find out