SPORTS SIDEBAR THE OWNERS, ANALYZE’D

BOTH MEN HAVE ARKANSAS ROOTS. BOTH GREW UP POOR. Both are now rich penny-pinchers. Both own Dallas sports franchises. Both come across as small-town, Both occasionally put their foot in their mouth. Media critics have referred to one as “Jethro,” the other as “Jed.”

The one who dresses like a cowboy almost bought the Dallas Cowboys just before the other did.

That’s pretty much where the similarities end between Jerry Jones and Don Carter. Firing Tom Landry and Jimmy Johnson, winning two Super Bowls, and constant self-promoting have turned Cowboy owner and general manager Jones, 53, into America’s most famous (or infamous) sports owner. If basketball fans around the country know Dallas Maverick owner Don Carter, it’s mostly as that character in the cowboy hat and boots who sits at courtside and does the two-step with his wife during timeouts.

Fans have stopped laughing at “Jethro” Jones. But though the Mavericks’ future looks considerably brighter than two years ago, when they were an NBA-worst 13 -69, fans haven’t stopped crying over “Jed” Carter. Jones makes controversial moves that usually prove shrewd. Carter often has made outrageously dumb decisions, such as the franchise-crippling contract (a guaranteed $24 million for six years) he gave Roy Tarpley upon his return from a three-year NBA ban for substance abuse.

“Mr. C. does not understand what it takes to win at the top level,” says a Mavericks source. ” When Jerry Jones has to get a Deion Sanders, or keep an Emmirt Smith, he does it. Carter pays the wrong players too much, and he thinks he’s making a statement when he refuses to pay what the market bears for a top free agent. You can’t compete that way.”

What it boils down to, close observers say, is that Jerry Jones played football and operates as a businessman who doesn’t get close to his players, while Don Carter never played any sport, doesn’t really know much about basketball, and gets way too close to some of his players.

Jones became a starter at offensive guard on a national championship team at Arkansas. Carter’s athleticism consisted of riding motorcycles and racing hot rods around old Crozier Tech High School, where he was a self-described juvenile delinquent-a “greaser with a ducktail.”

Jones is a chip off the block of father J.W. “Pat” Jones, a smalltime entrepreneur who by night turned his grocery store into a honky-tonk and once owned a low-budget exotic-animal park on the side. While playing at Arkansas, Jerry Jones ran a one-man business driving fans to the Fayetteville airport right after games. “They loved hearing what really went on out thereon the field,” Jones says, flashing his trademark crooked grin, Though Jones had a desire to coach when he graduated, he told teammates such as Jimmy Johnson that he first wanted to “go make a million dollars.” He tried selling insurance and real estate and putting in fast-food restaurants. He nearly went broke. He tried drilling for oil. Several times, he was nearly tapped out, but he persisted, He finally struck it rich in oil and gas.

Born in Fayetteville, Ark., Carter was raised by his mother, Mary Crowley, in Dallas. To make ends meet, he sold peanuts at the Cotton Bowl and Moody Coliseum, while she started a knickknack business in her home. It eventually exploded into one of America’s biggest success stories: Home Interiors and Gifts, a multi-million-dollar company. Carter helped turn his mother’s booming business into an even bigger money machine, then wisely invested his profits in real estate,

Jones, by contrast, made every penny of his fortune from scratch, Once Jones had his millions, he grew bored with the anonymity of the oil-and-gas business and made up his mind to buy a pro football franchise. In 1988, he and his son Stephen had left what Jones calls a “boring” oil-and-gas convention in San Diego for a little getaway in Cabo San Lucas. Hung over from a long night at a bar called the Giggling Marlin, Jones noticed “with just one eye open” a story in a day-old San Diego newspaper: The Dallas Cowboys were for sale, “I’m going to buy the Cowboys,” he vowed before telling the Mexico operator he wanted to call Dallas.

Little did Jones know that a Cowboy fan named Carter nearly had bought die team a couple of mont lis earlier. Don Carter owned a suite at Texas Stadium and long had idolized coach Tom Landry and former quarterback Roger Staubach. In 1977, after a near-fatal crash in his plane, Carter had rededicated his life to Christ. Landry and Staubach, known for their spiritual stances as God’s Coach and God’s Quanerback, were the perfect role models for Carter, who dreamed for a while of being God’s Owner. In fact, when he first considered buying the team, Carter talked to Staubach about being the general manager. Staubach said he would consider it.

Carter, in other words, was your typical wide-eyed Cowboy fan. Jones, never that keen on following the Cowboys or any pro team, was more interested in running a franchise than worshipping one.

H.R. “Bum” Bright had put his Cowboys up for sale through the New York-based firm of Salomon Brothers. When Carter called to begin “horse-trading,” Bright told him he would have to deal with the Salomon Brothers broker. Carter admitted, “I’m never that comfortable dealing with people from New York. ” Actually, the broker handling the sale was based in Dallas, but Carter was miffed that Bright wouldn’t deal with him man-to-man. Bright tried to soften Carter by sending him an autographed Cowboy helmet, and for a day or so, Bright’s people were confident he and Carter would make a deal. But once Carter is offended, he usually stays that way. He can be self-destructively stubborn.

Carter had his financial people size up Bright’s asking price vs. the team’s market value. Carter, who just a few days earlier had sounded so excited about owning his favorite team, suddenly soured on the deal. All he would say was, “The numbers just don’t add up. I’m out of it.”

What might have happened had Carter bought the Cowboys? Who knows? Given Carter’s curious loyalties, Landry might still be coach, at 71. Danny White might still be the quarterback and Randy White a starting defensive tackle, and perhaps the Cowboys would be stuck in the same slow-motion slide that plagued Cowboy fans through the late ’80s.

Instead, some outsider from Arkansas named Jones soon jumped into die bidding against, according to Bright, a dozen or so interested parties. The Salomon Brothers broker, Jack Veatch, took an immediate liking to Jones, saying, “On the phone, he sounds just like Don Meredith. People here are going to love him. ” In the end, J ones managed to outbid what Bright called “big boy” bidders-including Los Angeles Laker owner Jerry Buss-and was ridiculed in the media for paying about $140 million for the team and stadium. Today. Jones’ team is worth five times that amount-maybe more.

Jones wanted to make tradition, not preserve it. The day he closed the deal, Jones didn’t hesitate to tell Landry that he wanted to bring in his college teammate, Jimmy Johnson, to coach the Cowboys. That night, Feb. 25,1989, became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. At his introductory press conference, Jones told the Cowboy world that he was going to know everything about the team down to “the socks and Jocks.” What he was trying to say was that he wasn’t going to be an absentee owner, that he was going to pull away from his oil-and-gas business and focus lull tune on being the Cowboys’ on-site general manager. But many fans and media critics took Jones to mean he’d be hanging around the locker room trying to rub elbows and egos with the Aikmans and Emmitts.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. Rarely is Jones seen in the locker room during the week. He does not socialize with his players because he’s more concerned about being able to negotiate objectively against them and their agents, The Aikmans and Emmitts harbor some resentment toward Jones because he can be so tough to pin down and beat come contract time.

Conversely, Carier has treated many of his stars like family, often having them over for dinner. Carter has said players like Mark Aguirre, Derek Harper, and especially Roy Tarpley are “like grandsons” to him. Says a Mav source, “He spoiled Mark and Roy so bad that he made them almost impossible to coach. Any time they didn’t like what the coach said or did. they ran to Don.”

Carter critics attribute that weakness to what one calls “his stubborn missionary side.” Even after Tarpley told a Chicago reporter he still drank beer, which certainly can lead to more cocaine use (and possibly to the pancreas attacks that have sidelined him), Carter was still trying to show the world that he could save his “grandson”- right up to the day Tarpley drank himself out of the NBA and S22.8 million of Carter’s money.

Psychology aside, the effects of Carter’s “missionary side” are clear. The Mavericks have three of the best young players in the NBA (Jason Kidd, Jim Jackson, Jamal Mashburn), but they couldn’t add that one key free agent who would have put them over the top because Tarpley’s contract strapped them against the salary cap. And, a Mavs insider complains, “Don nearly killed us when he refused to pay Jim Jackson market value when we drafted him. We came very close to having to trade Jackson.”

While Jones’ 365-day focus is the Cowboys and the NFL, Carter still serves as chairman of the board of Home Interiors and Gifts and has spent weeks at a time in the jungles of Central America saving souls and distributing food and clothing among the natives. The Mav source says, “He’s not always around, but he wants to be apprised of eveny basketball move before it’s made. It’s funny: Jerry Jones wants the world to know he runs the Cowboys, while Don wants fans to think he stays completely away from it, which isn’t true.”

Jones, of course, is in the middle of every Cowboy personnel decision. When coaches disagree and the clock is running on a draft-day trade or pick, Jones makes the call. The results speak for diemselves.

Not only is Carter in the team’s “war room” on draft night, but so is his wife, an ex-high school basketball player who probably knows the game at least as well as her husband does, During last Junes draft, Mav officials disagreed over which player to take with their second first-round pick. With time running out, Linda Carter said to Jason Kidd, “Jason, which one do you want?” Kidd said Iowa State’s Loren Meyer. Then go with Meyer, Mrs. Carter suggested. The Mavs took Meyer.

Jones’ wife Gene-a former Poultry Princess from Arkansas-stays in the background, mostly working on the mansion she and her husband are building in Highland Park. Meanwhile, Jones has become known league-wide for his honky-tonking. He blows off steam by taking groups of family, friends, and instant friends from bar to bar, sometimes until the sun rises. “I love to be out among’em,” says Jones. He wants to be seen, to be where the action is,

Carter spends evenings with his family and his rodeo stock out on his spread in Lewisville. He doesn’t drink alcohol and reprimands employees who accidentally cuss around him. In 1988, after the Mavs lost the biggest game in their history-Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals in Los Angeles-Carter blew his top after seeing a couple of assistant coaches sipping a beer in the locker room.

Jones fired Jimmy Johnson because he refused to become the buddy and confidant that coach Barry Switzer is to Jones. The owner doesn’t want to change game plans or call plays; he just wants the coaching staff to include him as one of the boys, drink a few beers with him, share inside stuff he can share with others.

Last May, Carter hired 62-year-old coach Dick Motta for a second Dallas term “because he’s always been my coach. He’s like a brother to me.” Motta sometimes makes fun of Carter behind his back. Team employees believe Carter knows it and turns the other cheek. They say Carter also is aware that Motta likes to have a few drinks, especially when the team is on the road, but that Carter looks the other way. The Maverick owner still likes to think of himself as a maverick. Perhaps he gets some vicarious thrills from his relationships with Aguirre, Tarpley, and Motta, who constantly have defied authority.

Yet Jerry Jones is the ultimate maverick. His fellow owners have sued him for $300 million for defying NFL Properties revenue-sharing rules and cutting his own deals with Nike and Pepsi. Jones has counter-sued for $750 million. Jones has a big heart, but he’ll cut yours out if you get in his way.

Carter would make the more loyal friend. He and his wife are still trying to save the Dallas Sidekicks franchise, which they own in the Continental Indoor Soccer League. Jones would find a way to make the Sidekicks a success, but they wouldn’t interest him. Not enough people are interested in soccer.

Of the two owners. Carter is the one you would trust with your life. Jones is the one you want owning and operating your sports franchise. He is driven to win “many more Super Bowls” and to leave a Hall of Fame legacy as the visionary owner who helped negotiate the Fox TV deal, who ramrodded the salary cap, and who took the NFL into the next century with his marketing philosophies.

Carter just wants his Mavs to make the playoffs again so fans will get off his back when he stops by the 7-Eleven.