Jerry Jones Quotes

I am dead set against free agency. It can ruin baseball.

I don't blame the players today for the money. I blame the owners. They started it. They wanna give it to 'em? More power to 'em.

I'd get rid of it, just get rid of the draft altogether. We'd just deal with the salary cap.

I think the league is going to be changing because there's so much money that teams have. And they can spend so much.

We need a system where all of our teams have the opportunity to compete and to make a few dollars. That's not a bad desire for collective bargaining for a sports league, and it's great for our fans.

The only thing wrong with the NBA - or any other professional sport, for that matter - is a wild epidemic of Dumbness and overweening Greed. There is no Mystery about it, and no need to change any rules.

The two major things that changed the makeup of all professional sports are money generated by television and courts that players went to in order to win their freedom as free agents.

I guess when you get paid over 100 million dollars by one team, it's kind of easy to point the finger at other guys and try to hate on them for trying to get another contract.

I think money in general hurts all sports.

The economics of baseball are the big problem. The big clubs make a lot of money and the little clubs don't.

Once you've been around this business long enough, anything is a possibility. It's a business first and foremost. Guys play it because they love it, but it is a business, and if you don't understand that it's a business, you're lying to yourself.

And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball's profitability by 'running the game like a business.'

A lot of players know I've been around 13 years and this is my second lockout. I got a lot of respect. I know what's going on both for the league and the union.

And historically the owners have used loyalty to a team or a city to hold players as opposed to always paying their worth.

You realize it's a business and that teams are going to do what's best for them. That's how it is. That's what we sign up for as a Major League Baseball player.

I think people have to realize that - and basketball fans do, Lakers fans do - that we have to operate under the rules of the collective bargaining agreement, which means you can't just go and grab every player that you want.

Now astronomical wages are making it very difficult to take somebody who might not even have a transfer fee attached to them, because of the net value that they want and the net value that they're worth.

Today, free agency takes away a lot of your heroes, they go somewhere else. Some of them don't but a lot of them do-take the higher offer to go somewhere else. And, it turns the fans off because they get attached to the players.

Our economics are not baseball's economics. Our game is not baseball's game. Our owners are not baseball's owners, with one or two exceptions. Our union is not baseball's union. What we do has to be crafted and suited to address hockey, to address the NHL, to address our 30 teams and our 700-plus players.

It certainly is dangerous that there are only a few clubs left in Europe that can afford to pay millions. At the end of the day however, the spectators decide the rates of pay - by watching the games and consuming the goods and services advertised on sports TV programmes.

Yes, we've seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the sky is not falling - baseball is such a great game that neither the owners nor the players can kill it. After some necessary carnage, market forces will prevail.

Baseball has changed dramatically since I began my tenure with the Yankees.

The rules are changed now, there's not any way to build a team today. It's just how much money you want to spend. You could be the world champions and somebody else makes a key acquisition or two and you're through.

I went out as a free agent in Boston and had a great year and I priced myself out of there market, at the time.

To be candid with you, free agency hurts all sports. It's great for athletes making an enormous amount of money. But to say it helps the sports, I don't believe that.