He was named a finalist for the 2020 class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a contributor, however he was not elected. The Pete Gent Show was not renewed. His father was its president. While his "financing by finagling" precipitated the crash, the family's downfall also resulted from bitter lawsuits in the third generation. John Murchison and his brother Clint Murchison Jr. were the first owners of the Dallas Cowboys. And, one day, you wake up and realize you did what they told you. These young kids seem to be having so much fun. Theyll kill the Bills. The home has a solarium, with access to the garden, as well as a trophy room with original murals signed by Reveau Bassett. Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2017. Finally, I could make out the word cowboy. He spent 19 years at the Los Angeles Times before returning to Dallas. The first of its kind in the NFL, it was originally intended to be part of a 160-acre mixed use development. And: 2. He made Phi Beta Kappa in electrical engineering at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and earned a masters degree in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was at the time the countrys toughest school for science and engineering. The team last won it all in Super Bowl XXX in Tempe, Ariz., on Jan. 28, 1996, when the Cowboys beat the Pittsburgh Steelers to capture their fifth Lombardi Trophy. He was determined to create a venue that protected fans while allowing the weather elements freedom to impact the game. The Murchison estate also included what the family called the "Big House," a 22,000-square-foot mansion that Clint Sr. built and which Lupe abandoned in 1998, when she completed her house just . COMING IN 2022 FROM TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY PRESS. A three-story mansion in San Antonio's Monte Vista Historic District once owned by powerful oilman Clint Murchison has hit the market for $1.5 million. But some things havent changed: I am a father who refuses to allow his son to play football despite his deep desire and obvious talent as a receiver-it is a price that is just not worth the privilege. A 'Wheeler-Dealer' Nature. They had a good system. Despite Mr. Murchison's financial problems and failing health, friends and business acquaintances said he remained a cheerful and optimistic man. And not very bright. And yet, it was money that Clint Sr. and his wife would not be able to share. Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web. A motivating factor in the NFL's decision to award a license for Dallas was the establishment of the American Football League (AFL) by Lamar Hunt, another Dallas area businessman. I joined the team for the 1964 season, coming to Dallas and the NFL out of Big Ten Basketball at Michigan State. It was the last time I saw Clint Murchison Jr. From the beginning, Clint saw it as far more than a place to play games. Over the next 20 years I wrote three more novels, several screenplays, dozens of newspaper and magazine articles and saw my screenplay of North Dallas Forty made into a major motion picture starring Nick Nolte. Clint Sr. was born in 1895 in Athens, a small hamlet in East Texas. For public libraries interested in the history of the oil business or Texas, or in the exploits of the wealthy. Clint Jr.s risk-taking would lead him to the world of professional football and allow his team to succeed. Joe Bailey There was the Lays commercial preceding Michael Jacksons Heal the World spectacular: Mike Ditka and Howie Long and Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor and the rest making fun of Tom Landrys bald head to sell potato chips. On January 31, 1993, he was euphoric. ''One of his greatest satisfactions besides the Cowboys was Texas Stadium, the home of the Cowboys,'' John D. O'Connell, a longtime friend and business associate, said of Clinton Murchison. I was an account executive for Tracy-Locke advertising and we were handling a new Frito-Lay product called Doritos. Clinton Williams Murchison Jr. (September 12, 1923 - March 30, 1987) was a businessman and founder of the Dallas Cowboys football team. The Packers went instead and we became the team that couldnt win the big game. Even the staid Cullens found. When it all came to an end in 1984 the tragic part of the story Clint Jr. had lost everything, and risk-taking was largely to blame. Yet, he was the rainmaker of his generation., The death of his mother and closest brother took its toll on Clint Jr. in other ways. Clint Jr. saw a downtown stadium as a far better home for his rapidly improving team than what he called the fully depreciated Cotton Bowl in Fair Park. He and his Cowboys cronies tried for a decade to foul up the Redskins big Christmas halftime show that was highlighted by Santa arriving at mid-field pulled by a dogsled. Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2015. He sat on the board of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, which lingered in Fair Park, in the shadow of the Cotton Bowl, until 1984, when it moved to downtown Dallas as the newly christened Dallas Museum of Art. His philosophy was simplistic enough, once telling his sons, "Money is like . Before that moment, however, Bryant said he asked specifically about two iconic buildings: the World Trade Center in New York and Texas Stadium in Irving. Theyll never die. Editors note: This excerpt from Hole in the Roof: The Dallas Cowboys, Clint Murchison Jr., and the Stadium That Changed American Sports Forever, by Burk Murchison and News staff writer Michael Granberry, is reprinted with permission from Texas A&M University Press. Then Perkins from Waterloo, Iowa, spoke in his deep, mellifluent voice. jccdallas.org/event/hole-in-the-roof. Clint Murchison Sr. began building the family fortune selling animal skins for pennies; later with interests in oil, real estate, and publishing, he was one of the first conglomerate makers. Broke and dying, Clint Jr. sold the Cowboys in 1984, the same year the art museum abandoned Fair Park, only to resurface downtown as the anchor of the Dallas Arts District. , Dimensions But the most compelling contain elements of all three. In football they teach you to leave it on the field. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. For the most part, Murchison was a hands-off owner, delegating a great deal of operational control of the Cowboys to general manager Tex Schramm, head coach Tom Landry and scouting/personnel director Gil Brandt. The club came apart from the top. The plan was to turn the chickens loose when the dogsled hit the field. Murchison funded radio entrepreneur Gordon McLendon to create a floating commercial (pirate radio) station called Radio Nord aboard the motor vessel Bon Jour, anchored in the Stockholm archipelago. I stood holding Carter in my arms, and it was an awkward moment. After its patriarch passed away, the family empire prevailed under a partnership called Murchison Brothers. And theyll beat Buffalos no-huddle offense by sacking Jim Kelly and causing a lot of fumbles and interceptions. Carter tells me that the week before the game. Both received highly favorable reviews, including this one about "THE MURCHISONS" - "If episodes of the TV show 'Dallas' were half as interesting as this real life Texas family, ratings would never be a problem.". A fantastic book about an amazing dynasty. The franchise was worth $600,000 when the Murchisons bought it, and the Super Bowl was an afterthought of a game designed to pave the way for the NFL-AFL merger that would keep down player salaries. The Los Angeles coliseum was half empty, and the crowd was asked to sit opposite the press box so that TV audiences would have the impression that there were lots of people in attendance. Anything short of a world championship followed by designing your own line of sporting goods means failure. : Clinton Williams Murchison, Sr. (April 11, 1895 - 20 June 1969), was a noted Texas-based oil magnate and political operative. John excelled, in Woolleys words, in such three-piece-suit enterprises as banking and insurance. Unable to add item to List. His failure is just one of the ways Hole in the Roof embraces a double meaning. The suites were an immediate status sensation. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. I could just picture all their agents arguing about fees and residuals with the guys from PepsiCo. Didnt Landry and [Tex] Schramm draft Aikman? I ask halfheartedly. The younger Mr. Murchison attended preparatory school in Lawrenceville, N.J., and was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Duke University with a degree in electrical engineering while serving in the Marine Corps. And prospered. ), Richardson, Hunt, Murchison and Cullen accomplished their meteoric rise through an alchemy of luck and risk, whose payoff was best captured in the lyrics of the 1960s television comedy The Beverly Hillbillies, about a poor mountaineer who was shootin at some food, when up through the ground come a bubblin crude. Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2017. Clint Murchison Sr. began building the family fortune selling animal skins for pennies; later with interests in oil, real estate, and publishing, he was one of the first conglomerate makers. Then Clint slowly lifted his cane and smilingly pointed at the front of Carters pullover shirt. Money is like manure, Clint Sr. once famously told his boys, echoing a line written by Thornton Wilder in his 1954 play, The Matchmaker, but adding his own special spin: If you spread it around, it does a lot of good. Follow Mary Grace Granados on Instagram, go to our luxury real estate page or subscribe to our free weekly newsletter. And, right now, in the euphoric afterglow of victory that has to be covering the Metroplex like a constant fog, it would be difficult to find fault with two guys from Arkansas. In her first book, Wolfe, former society editor of the Dallas Morning News , gives a superb glimpse of the personal lives and family dynamics of these millionaires whose bankruptcy in 1985 stunned both the state of Texas and the nation's financial community. In 1966, when the still-young Dallas Cowboys franchise ended six years of agony with their first winning season, the team's owner and founder, Clint Murchison Jr., son of a billionaire oilman, was feeling ambitious. She said he died of complications caused by pneumonia. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness. He said it interfered with concentration. He also happened to be far more socially adept, comfortable in high society in ways his brother never was nor hoped to be. The bonds were in denominations of $250. They passed up Tony Mandarich for Troy Aikman. Carter turns back to Ice Cube and The Nappy Dug Out. They look at guys like me as really old and not very relevant to the world. They dress like 1 did on my TV show in 1967. In 1984, an ailing Murchison[4] sold the Dallas Cowboys to an investment syndicate led by Bum Bright, a Dallas area businessman who had a background in banking/financial services and in oil/gas production. Theyll never get old. Murchison and McLendon remained in the shadows and allowed Murchison's long-time friend Robert F. Thompson to take credit for actual ownership while day-to-day management was vested in Swedish-Finnish businessman Jack S. Kotschack. Pre-order on Amazon. Clint W. Murchison Jr., the scion of a Texas wildcat oil family who created the Dallas Cowboys football team, died Monday night. I dont know anything at all about Smith and Everett. Moldea's book further alleges that Murchison maintained a working relationship with former U.S. Senate power broker Bobby Baker (known as "Lyndon Jr." for his close affiliation with the . Somebody get that gol durn Bill Glass, Reeves said in his angry Georgia drawl. This next part is important, because it underscores the model Clint Jr. followed with the Cowboys: Once Clint Sr. established or acquired a company, he left its operations to others, in the same way that Clint Jr. appointed Tex Schramm to be his president and general manager and Tom Landry his head coach. Now its rap and hip-hop an Garth Brooks passes as a country singer. Clint Sr. shipped John and Clint off to prep school. It was the first to use seat option bonds to help fund construction and first to offer luxury suites on a commercial scale. Kevin Smith covered Jerry Rice last week. He has his eyes on the TV. (Perhaps its no coincidence that H.L. You better have a story I havent heard or Im going to my room. Instead, Murchison believed in his young coach and gave him an unprecedented 10-year contract that turned out to be a very successful move. He believed his team would be good, even special, for years to come. They had gotten as far as seeding the field with hundreds of pounds of chicken feed and smuggling a couple hundred chickens into the stadium. The article, by Edwin Pope, a sports editor of The Miami Herald, referred to Mr. Murchison as ''a 130-pound halfback from M.I.T.'' Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations. He was talking about the very place I made my living in the 60s. And, I must admit I got some enjoyment out of it. Clint Sr. appreciated the kindness, but in his mind, academia was no place for a Murchison. Just one story in the folklore is how one night, Clint Sr. drove to Wichita Falls, near the Oklahoma border, fueled by a rumor hed heard about a wildcat well ready to start pumping black gold. And Murchison didnt stop with the fight song. Murchison suggested hiring Landry away from his job as a defensive coach with the New York Giants. And, if they werent in our living room yelling back and forth, they would call each other up after every third or fourth play, every touchdown, field goal, interception, fumble, or quarterback sack and heckle over the phone. The answer to the mystery revealed itself in what was then the highest-rated episode in television history, titled Who Done It?, luring an estimated 83 million viewers more than the number of voters in that years presidential election. . Now, they would pee on an electric fence to get Kenny to sing the national anthem. He rarely exchanged pleasantries and ignored people he knew when he would see them on the street or in the elevator. His grandfather founded the First National Bank in Athens. Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2002, This book proved to be a very good read.You are shown how the, Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2007. This was, for the most part, exactly what Clint Jr. had envisioned. Even so, Clint Jr. created a football team that compiled a record 20 consecutive winning seasons, from 1966 through 1985; appeared in five Super Bowls, winning two; and came to be known as Americas Team. His 2 sons then extended the empire to Wall Street in the 1950s and pro football in the 1960s--they started the Dallas Cowboys. In telling you the story, we will show you how it serves as history, comedy and tragedy, but most of all, as a rollicking read, every bit as fascinating as a Texas character named Clint Murchison Jr., the creator of your Dallas Cowboys, who fostered their own rare world beneath the hole in the roof that seized the attention of terrorists and sports fans alike. DAD? He believed his team would be good, even special, for years to come. After everybody finished laughing and Danny finished blushing (which he did often), Meredith called the next play and we went on to beat Cleveland. Unable to strike a bargain with the City of Dallas, he elected to build a new stadium in Irving, Texas. Yep. Even those who know a little, Fortune wrote, dont pretend to understand how Clint got mixed up in so much outlandish stuff, or how he keeps track of it all without going batty or broke. His wealth in 1953 was estimated at $300 million and growing. Young called the 18,589-square-foot floor plan classic and said it was based on the White House. When Clint Murchison, Jr. was 26 years old in 1949, his father. Except for one play and they called that one back. I am on shaky ground. Eventually, skyrocketing interest rates and plummeting oil and real estate prices led him to one of the largest personal bankruptcies in history. In terms of what stadiums could mean to the foundation of a franchise, Jones took what Clint envisioned and put it on steroids. Clint Murchison Sr. erupted from East Texas during the rough-and-tumble years of oil drilling in the 1930s, and spent his life "doing deals." (In todays dollars, thats more than $750,000.) He looks at me. The home has six additional bedrooms, two of which are in what is designated as the guest suite. They slapped down $50,000 on the spot to buy the leases. He also longed for a symbol of redemption a state-of-the-art stadium that could go a long way toward restoring a depressed downtown in the wake of President John F. Kennedys assassination on Elm Street in Dallas in 1963. ''With his engineering background, he was very much 'hands on' during its construction. Now he has a 16-year-old son who sees the team and the sport very differently than he did. Clint taught the sports world how stadiums could be so much more than where games are played. Clint Murchison Jr. was an entrepreneur, businessman and risk-taking founder of the successful Dallas Cowboys football franchise. In 1971,1 began to write my first novel-North Dallas Forty, which would be published in 1973 to critical acclaim and to dismay in the Cowboys front office. Carter, I ask, do you like Jimmy Johnson? : His general attitude was to hire experts and let them execute the aspect of the business that fell in their expertise. The home at 23 Ash Bluff Lane is listed for $7.5 million by Lillie Young of Allie Beth Allman and Associates. : The News described it as Murchisons country home, a 25-room house with an air-conditioned basement. Clint Murchison Jr. (left) and his brother John Murchison smiled after a 1961 meeting of the new board of directors of the multibillion-dollar Alleghany Corp. in New York. All in a days work. Clint Jr. did, too. Johnson also drafted Kevin Smith and traded for Thomas Everett at the defensive halfbacks. The brothers won. What about Clint? He reacted to his rejection by threatening to slit the throat of loan manager Johnell Bryant, who told him she was skilled in the martial arts, which scared him away. Recalling his wit and sense of humor, Mr. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Bright in turn sold the Cowboys to Jerry Jones in 1989 following several losing seasons. As we show you later, the city of Dallas twice rejected Americas Team, failing to cut a deal that forced the 21st-century Cowboys to look elsewhere for a new home, which turned out to be Arlington. I was led to this book from Brian Burrough's "The Big Rich." He has turned on MTV and is watching the Naughty By Nature video Hip-Hop Hooray. After all, Michael Irvin makes about $1.2 million and drives a Mercedes. It is a perfect example of the generation gap between my son and me-the old Cowboys and the new Cowboys. Both have become huge moneymakers and a part of American sports mythology. Undaunted, these rich Dallas tycoons would get drunk, make prank calls to George Preston Marshall in the middle of the night and cluck into the phone. Mr. Murchison is survived by his second wife, Anne, and a daughter and three sons from his first marriage, Coke Anne Saunders, Clint Murchison 3d, Burk Murchison and Robert Murchison. My total salary for five years with the Cowboys is less than single game checks today. I played with Don Perkins in Dallas in the 60s, and he was the greatest football player I ever saw. They won for 20 years. 1 am quickly backpedaling. The primary suite has two bathrooms (one complete with a coffee bar), and both are adorned with marble finishes. By noon the next day, theyd returned to Wichita Falls, having tripled their profit in 24 hours by flipping the leases for $200,000 (more than $3 million in todays dollars). It is now a signature element in the design of AT&T Stadium, whose own version of the hole in the roof appeared in the opening moments of the TNT remake of Dallas. J. R. crumpled to the floor with a gunshot wound in the cliffhanger episode that aired on March 21, 1980. Hes wondering the same thing I am: What the hell am I doing defending Tom Landry? By Peter H. Frank, Special To the New York Times. 750 North St.Paul St. Her current book is "BURL: Journalism Giant and Media Trailblazer," to be published by Andrews McMeel Publishing (AMP) on September 6, 2022. Suite 2100 [7] On the eve of the Dallas Cowboys' first Super Bowl he wrote to coach Tom Landry, Dear Tom: I have taught you all I can. No spam, ever. When I see Bobby Knight throw a fit on television and realize my son is going to have to deal with a high-school coach who thinks mats the way to behave, I mourn for high-school sports and the quick, bloody death of so many young dreams. As Wolfe notes in her book, The professor told Murchison that it was a great loss to science that his son Clint had gone into business.. But Don Perkins never played in a Super Bowl. I read the other day that Tom Landry has little time for or interest in professional football these days. Plenty of Texas History you would never learn about in a history class (in Texas). Theyll win at least three. The Murchisons were one of the most prominent oil families in Texas, a state knee deep in them. Theyve got free agency, and theyre going to live and play in the NFL forever. In the long run, the Cowboys may be the family's biggest memorial. It may come as news to anyone who played for the Cowboys after the mid-70s and to all the fans, but the Redskins/Cowboys rivalry didnt start on the field or even between the players. He loved to spend an evening at the home of a professor, or a fellow graduate student, where the conversation about mathematical or scientific theory lasted well into the morning hours.. I made $ 11.000, arid my rent was $ 180 a month for a furnished one-bedroom. This story ends with Super Bowl XXVII. Copyright 2023, D Magazine Partners, Inc. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. . Among his companies was the Southern Union Company. Now, the Cowboys are made up of kids not much older than my son, and Carter has predicted the 90s will be the Cowboys decade. Top subscription boxes right to your door, 1996-2023, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon. Murchison fought a rare nerve disease called olivopontocerebellar atrophy[4] and was in a wheelchair in his final years. I just wish it was on Kindle. The event is free, but registration is required. Clinton Williams Murchison Jr. (September 12, 1923 - March 30, 1987) was a businessman and founder of the Dallas Cowboys football team. Its cast of supporting actors included silent brother John. It sits on property that was part of the Dallas Polo Club in the 1920s, she said. His father loved to stay borrowed up to the hilt. New Yorkborn J. Erik Jonsson, a chap of Swedish descent who served as mayor of Dallas from 1964 to 1971, and Fair Park guardian Robert B. Cullum, who owned a supermarket chain that took as its namesake fairy tale hero Tom Thumb, thwarted at every turn Clint Jr.s quixotic crusade to construct a stadium in downtown Dallas, which he hoped to buttress with a lavish new performing arts center and art museum. Hunts son, Lamar, also founded a professional team, the Dallas Texans, who began playing in the Cotton Bowl in 1960, at the same time the Cowboys did, but who, after winning the American Football League Championship in 1962, became the Kansas City Chiefs a year later, only months before the Kennedy assassination in November 1963. In later years, the joke became, They talk about Clint being low-profile, but he was a carnival-barker show daddy compared to John, who most Cowboys fans didnt know existed. In later years, however, John played an excruciatingly important role in the history of the Cowboys albeit in death, which triggered the fall of Clint Murchison Jr. John was two years older than Clint Jr. and was, by all accounts, the careful, judicious partner. Hole in the Roof takes you on a deep dive into the personality and passions of Clint Jr., while extending a more than passing hello to everyone else who was part of his world. Working with his father and his brother John, the Murchison family diversified away from oil into homebuilding, general construction, real estate development, insurance, mutual funds, publishing, the leisure time industry and restaurant industry. The two men sustained their roles for almost three decades until Jones bought the team. More than $500 million in liabilities have been filed against the Murchison estate in the last two years. Clint Jr.s success can be attributed largely to Schramm, a marketing genius; Landry, one of the games great coaches; and Gil Brandt, who, as director of scouting, revolutionized the way players are recruited by using newfangled technology computers long before computers were commonplace. As Woolley wrote, The Boss and his sons got into the construction business, for instance, with only $20,000 of their money and an $80,000 promissory note. Please try again. Most of it was written over the last 30 years, beginning before my son was born and culminating in recent years as I listened to what my son knew about the Dallas Cowboys and professional football. Theres no in-between mats very comfortable. Dealing with dilemmas is what a lifetime in sports teaches you. As Robert Murchison, Clint Jr.s youngest of four children, notes, Their brother Burk, Dads best friend, died when John was 13 and Dad, 12. Clint Jr. and John, Robert adds, could not have been more different.