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This is the Skip Bayless Show, episode 28. This, as always, is the Un-Undisputed. This is everything I cannot share with you during the two and a half hour go for the throat debate show that is Undisputed. On today's show, I'm gonna go deeper than one of Jerry's oil wells on Jerry Jones. Then, little break from tradition here,

I'm going to take on a whole bunch of your questions on LeBron versus Brady, on why I'm from Oklahoma City but don't love the Thunder, on what I cannot leave home without, on my Dallas cowboy, Mount Rushmore, on my most memorable undisputed episode ever, on how I score debates against Shannon Sharpe,

And finally, on which NFC East rival I hate the most as a lifelong diehard Cowboy fan. Can't wait for that. But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped. The NFL thankfully is back in camp, which means my beloved Dallas Cowboys are not so thankfully back to torture me for another football season.

Yet, in honor of the Cowboys going back to camp, I opened today's show by reading the opening passage from the first of my three Dallas Cowboy books that I wrote. In my view, the best of the three. It's called God's Coach, if you're not familiar. It's about the rise and the fall of Tom Landry's cowboy empire, which in many ways was closer to the Roman Empire.

"God's Coach" begins and ends with Gerald Wayne Jones Jr., Jerry Jones, who just might be the most amazing man I ever met. No exaggeration. So please for a moment sit back and so to speak, drink in the impossibly amazing way in which this quote unquote hick from the Arkansas sticks, this Jethro Jones,

somehow managed to acquire what would become the most valuable team in all the world, America's team. I now hold in my hands for those who are watching a real live hardcore, excuse me, a real live hardcover copy of "God's Coach," my first Cowboys book. And I'm about to read the opening words that I sat at my keyboard and wrote.

"Jerry Jones felt as if he had been tackled in his sleep by two tall Jones, his head, his stomach. Jones hadn't hurt so bad since August two a day practices back at the University of Arkansas. 'Lord have mercy,' said Jones, getting more religious with each throb."

For Jones, the hotel room in Cabo San Lucas was beginning to rock like a fishing boat on high seas. The hotel, some famous place Jones remembers, was built into the cliffs above the Pacific. Below, a charter boat waited in the harbor to take Jones, then age 46, and his oldest son, Stephen, then 23, out after Marlon.

But Jones had spent half the night before at a place called the Giggling Marlin, where turistas are strung up by their feet like a prize catch and allowed as many free margaritas as they can drink while upside down. Sick? Jones sure was. The mere thought of stinking fish and a rocking boat made him even queasier.

"You go on," he told Steven, who couldn't help grinning. "Oh, wait till the boys back home in Little Rock heard that Gerald Wayne Jones, Honky Tonk King, had met his match in Old Mexico the day before Jones and Son had been at an oil and gas convention in San Diego. Jerry Jones had done in the oil fields what he did on the football field: overachieve.

As a 200-pound guard, he had co-captained Arkansas's undefeated national championship team of 1964. He had married a former Miss Arkansas USA. Then, hustling, plunging, Jones kept striking it richer than Jet Clampett. Only in America, or Arkansas, Jones was worth what? 300 million? He didn't know for sure. But now, in early September 1988,

Jones was getting bored with Gushers. Stephen had done him proud by playing football at Arkansas and graduating with honors and an engineering degree. Daughter Charlotte had graduated from Stanford with a biology degree and had done some modeling. Jerry Jr. had left home to attend Georgetown. So now Jones was restless for a second career, a new challenge, something fun. He had tired of the convention and he decided to fly on down the Baja Peninsula.

in of course his Lear 35 with full-time pilot and co-pilot to do some deep sea fishing. That fired him back up. "I love to smile," Jerry Jones told me. But now the morning after, Jones was not smiling. He was wasting away in Margaritaville. Steven went on fishing and Jerry Jones through one eye passed the time scanning a day old San Diego sports section

that he had tucked into his suitcase. His hangover, miraculously, was cured by an item buried on page five. It said, "Dallas Cowboys owner H.R. Bumbright has retained Salomon Brothers, an investment banker, to find a buyer for the team." Jones was up, throwing on some clothes. "Damn, the Dallas Cowboys," he thought.

Soon he was downstairs in the lobby asking the amigo at the front desk, "How you call Dallas, Texas, USA?" Jones was led to a room with a single telephone. The international operator told Jones she'd call him back when she reached Salomon Brothers. Jones paced. The phone rang. The connection was terrible. Jones fairly yelled into the mouthpiece, "You don't know me, but my name is Jerry Jones and I'm going to buy the Dallas Cowboys."

And with those words, and now I'm speaking just to you, no longer reading, with those words, my life certainly changed. Now, 34 years later, Jerry Jones still owns and very much operates My Dallas Cowboys. He is the president. He is the general manager. He has eclipsed even George Steinbrenner as the most famous owner in the history of sports.

He is the face of the Cowboys. He is the biggest star on the Cowboys. He is the voice of the Cowboys with not one but two radio shows a week. Jerry Jones is the heartbeat, for better or worse, of my Dallas Cowboys. All because he got so drunk drinking margaritas while hanging upside down at the Giggling Marlin that he couldn't go out on that fishing boat with his son.

This makes me feel like I have a hangover and I don't even drink. Life is just so strange. This is the Dallas Cowboys we're talking about. And crazier still, Jerry Jones wound up having by far the least money of the final five bidders in 1988 by Dallas Cowboys. By far the least money. Didn't really belong anywhere.

in the grand finale. But Jerry was the only bidder who did not want to go forward with the great and powerful Landry, God's coach. And Tom Landry, to many in the Bible Belt, was the closest thing this world had ever seen to a second coming. In fact, Coach Landry actually toured in the off seasons with the Billy Graham crusade, sea to shining sea. The mere thought of firing Tom Landry

was just utter struck by lightning blasphemy, even though in 1988, that season before, Coach Landry's team had gone three in 13, which is why Dallas wound up with the first pick in the draft. Yet, Bumbright, the owner who was selling, despised Coach Landry, as Bum confided to me for the book I was reading from.

Bumbright told me that Landry had cold-shouldered him, never giving him even the time of day at a Christmas party. Bum said Landry's holier-than-thou attitude was always, so to speak, you know, I'm the genius Hall of Fame coach. You're the guy lucky enough to own the team that I coach. So just please stay out of the way and enjoy the ride. At least that was the attitude that Bum got from Coach Landry.

How lucky was Jerry Jones that Bum Bright wanted to get even with Tom Landry? It's a billion to one shot. But Jerry told Bum from the start that he wanted to bring in his old Arkansas teammate, roommate, Jimmy Johnson. They roomed together on the road only because they were in alphabetical order, not because they were that close. But he wanted to bring in Jimmy to be the new head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

And Bum told me that he, Bum, got a great kick out of that notion. So Bum took less money, he told me far less money, to sell America's team to this upstart interloper from Arkansas. From Arkansas? And upon signing the deal, Jerry flew his Lear 35 down to Austin, Texas and had Tom Landry

pulled off a golf course, a golf course called Hidden Hills, pulled off the 16th hole and in a makeshift sales office at Hidden Hills, he looked God's coach right in the eyes and he fired him. Bumbright later told me that that was actually Bright's decision and it was actually the then GM Tech Schramm's responsibility to do the deed by firing Landry. But no, Jerry did it. Jerry took the fall.

And if you wanna know the truth, the more I got to know Jerry, I think he wanted to take the fall. In part, it was the right thing to do to look God's coach in the eye, but it was also the egomaniacal thing to do. Jerry wanted to have quote unquote, "Coach Landry's blood on his hands" because he wanted to go down in history as the man who fired him. So that night back in Dallas, Jerry did his first big press conference of his life.

For him, it was Christmas morning. I bought the Dallas Cowboys. While Cowboy Nation was obviously in mourning for Coach Landry, and that session became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. It was live on TV, wire to wire, on all the Dallas local stations. Jerry put both feet in his mouth.

And yet, what I started to learn was that Jerry Jones had the thickest skin of any sports figure I have ever known. Thickest skin by far. And I believe that from that point forward, Jerry Jones has been criticized more than any sports figure in history. I believe that. It's a daily onslaught for Jerry Jones, and I believe he loves it. But I did marvel at how Jerry handled the onslaught that night

and how painfully, predictively honest he was with the media because he just declared that he was going to be flat out hands-on. He was going to know this franchise as he said that night down to the socks and jocks and to this day he still does. That night I decided to write God's Coach, yet the next morning in my column in the Dallas Times Herald, I defended Jerry Jones because

I sensed there was a lot to like about quote unquote Jethro Jones. I guess this helped me a little bit when I started to ask Jerry to be interviewed for my book, but I'm not sure that would have mattered that much because Jerry just loved to talk to the media, especially about Jerry. So for the three books I wrote, I wound up interviewing Jerry Jones dozens of times for hundreds of hours. I had dinner with Jerry

in his hotel suite the night before Cowboys played at San Francisco for the NFC Championship, that first go around, the end of the '92 season. I had breakfast with Jerry the morning of his first Super Bowl out here in LA at the Lowe's Santa Monica. Heck, I even had dinner with Jerry and his family and part of Barry Switzer's family in Phoenix

in very early 1996, the week of what would become Jerry's final Super Bowl and third Super Bowl victory. And my point is this, I really got to know Jerry Jones in all kinds of settings. I know him inside and out, and I must admit, I came to just like the heck out of him. I don't know anybody who spent any time around Jerry who doesn't like him.

He's just always so happy. Yeah, he's got a temper. I've seen him lose it before. Hell hath no fury like Jerry Scorn during a negotiation. And of course, he really lost it one night after they won their second Super Bowl with Jimmy as head coach. League meetings, Tampa, Jimmy proposed to Toast.

at a table full of cowboy assistant coaches. I'm sorry, Jerry proposed the toast and Jimmy refused to toast, refused to honor it, wouldn't lift his glass. Jerry tried again, Jimmy wouldn't lift his glass and Jerry stormed back to the host hotel, pulled a couple of Dallas reporters aside, said he was going to fire Jimmy Johnson and hire Barry Switzer. Bombshell news in Dallas. So there's that temper, but in general,

Jerry Jones, from day to day, moment to moment, is simply the happiest human I have ever known. And he is to this day. Of course, during that time I got to know him, the Cowboys were winning 13 playoff games in those three Super Bowls. That easily could have been four in a row, if not five in a row, had Jerry not fired Jimmy. And that was obviously in part because...

Jimmy didn't pay him enough respect, didn't have enough respect for him because Jimmy had fought his way up the hard way and Jerry had bought his way into general managing the Dallas Cowboys. Jimmy too often shamed Jerry in front of staffers or so Jerry thought. Jerry wanted some credit. I thought he deserved some. Jimmy thought he deserved next to none. And yet in Jimmy's defense,

In all those hours I spent around Jerry, I was always shocked at how little he really knew or understood football, given the fact that he played college football at a high level. He never was that conversant in football, never had that deeper comprehension that every head coach, assistant coach I ever knew had. Didn't really get the lingo of football, couldn't really see football himself. So he needed people to tell him what worked and what didn't.

And yet it was Jerry who pulled off the Charles Haley trade with San Francisco, their arch rival. Charles Haley became the unblockable defensive catalyst that propelled the Cowboys to those Super Bowls. Jerry Everett, the super salesman, somehow pulled that trade off. But first he needed someone inside the organization to explain to him who Charles Haley was and just how valuable he could be.

even though the San Francisco 49ers had finally decided that Charles Haley was more trouble than he was worth. But bigger picture, what I came to love most about Jerry was he was just so unsinkably, unflappably the lucky winner. He just had winner written all over him. He just had that damn the torpedoes drive, that supreme self-belief, that innate sort of intrinsic confidence

inexplicable brilliance about him, that sort of plunge your luck about him. If you remember the old cartoon character, Mr. Magoo, not sure you do, but Mr. Magoo could walk unsinged through burning buildings. That was Jerry. And that Jerry in 1996 had made me believe that my beloved Dallas Cowboys would be in great hands for dynastic decades to come. Ah,

Since that NFC Championship game, January 14th, 1996, Dallas won that game over Green Bay 38-27. My Cowboys, Jerry's Cowboys, haven't played in another NFC Championship game. Not a single one. Haven't sniffed one. That's about 9,700 days since they haven't even made it back to an NFC Championship game, let alone a Super Bowl. That's 26 and a half years.

No championship games, no Super Bowls. They have played in only 15 playoff games in those 26 years. That's tied for 19th in the NFL. But their record in those 15 is 4-11. Only four playoff wins in those 26 years since I was at dinner with Jerry and his family in Switzerland, his family in Phoenix ahead of that third Super Bowl.

Only four playoff wins in 26 years. So they won, did Jerry's Cowboys, 10 playoff games in the four years from 92 through 95. 10 playoff wins. That record through that stretch was 10-1 in the postseason, followed by four playoff wins in 26 years, a 4-11 record.

Even worse, their winning percentage, Jerry's Cowboys, in the last 26 years ranks third worst in the playoffs, in the playoffs, in the entire NFL. What? From dynasty to die-nasty, as in D-I-E, or die nasty. D-I-E-N-A-S-T-Y. Die nasty. Ugh.

So, was I dead wrong about the jury that I came to know through all those books? Nope, I was dead right. He is a natural born winner. He is still winning. He is still the NFL's happiest man. Still the happiest human I know. We, Cowboy fans, are the losers. We, Cowboy Nation, are relentlessly unhappy. We're built up, we're let down.

We're frustrated. We're tormented. We're tortured. And in the end, we're just mad as hell at Jerry bleeping Jones. Do something, Jerry. We all scream in chorus. In last offseason, Jerry did next to nothing. I'll just go ahead and say he did nothing. Can we vote him out of office now? Nope, can't do that. Will we quit watching the Cowboys? Quit going to games? Buying tickets to games? Will we drive him out of business? Of course we won't.

Jerry knows he has us all by the eyeballs. Jerry Jones got his three Super Bowl trophies that he still proudly displays in his gigantic office. He's extremely content with those three trophies. If Jerry had never won one of those, we'd have a whole different ball game going on. Whole different story right now, but he won three, and yet he's still covered by the national media, the world's media,

Like he just won the last three Super Bowls. He's still more famous or infamous than ever. His team is still the biggest TV draw in the NFL. And it's not even close. Just watch what's about to happen. And you will watch four or five of the top rated NFL games this year will feature Jerry's Dallas Cowboys, the most valuable team in the world.

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It's one of the NFL owners. It's Jerry or maybe Mr. Kraft, Robert Kraft in New England. But it feels like it's Jerry. It feels like Jerry is an ultimate decision maker in the National Football League. It feels like he's right there with Roger Goodell in power, if not a little above Roger in ultimate power. Jerry Jones? The hick from the Arkansas Sticks? Are you kidding me? Jerry's winning like never before. Yet...

That's why there's no urgency. There's no desperation. There's no gotta, gotta, gotta. There's none of that. Jerry's happy. Jerry's got a great ever-growing family, extended family around him. He's got a great wife, beautiful wife, still puts up with him. Jerry Jones is having the time of his life right now.

Remember, he tried to give up control once. He tried to hand over the reins to Bill Parcells for a little while. They ultimately clashed, mostly over Terrell Owens. And it obviously produced no Super Bowl. So now Jerry is just completely content to do it his way. He listens to Will McClay and the scouts and the assistant coaches. Then he picks the players in the draft. He loves this.

This is the most fun part of the job to him is picking the players on draft night and then the following draft days. He picks them. Buck stops on his desk. And I got to say, he's done a pretty great job of it, listening to the right people. And this is the way Jerry most knows that he can prove his manhood to those around him that he whose opinions he values.

I know how to pick a football player. I know a football player when I see one, I can see him coming from a mile away. That's Jerry's attitude because he runs the draft. The Cowboys are still hell bent on building through the draft. It's Jerry's claim to fame. Buying free agents, which he did once upon a time with Dion, it's just too easy and it's no real fun. So he'll let the Rams go with the F them picks philosophy, go trade for proven superstars. But

Jerry's going to prove that he can do it the old-fashioned way, through the draft. If he happens to win another Super Bowl and he's about to turn 80 in October, that would be great. If not, he's still got those three Lombardis in his office. He's still Jerry freaking Jones. And no matter what happens, Jerry's going to do it his way with the same old sorry coach who he's come to love like a brother. Please drop the mic, McCarthy.

McCarthy's gotten exposed as badly on the national stage as Russell Westbrook has on the Lakers stage. McCarthy was nothing but a product of Aaron Rodgers for all those years in Green Bay. But is McCarthy's last name Mudd now? No, it might as well be Jones, Mike McJones. Jerry loves socializing with his quote unquote brother Mike, and he loves pulling the puppet strings of his brother Mike.

who will do whatever Jerry tells him to do because he's got, in his eyes, the best job in football, coaching America's team. The Cowboys failed to improve at all last offseason, and in his opening remarks, his State of the Union the other day, as Cowboy Camp opened, Jerry as much as admitted it, he said, "Our window was open a year ago. We gave it a hell of a run. Didn't bring it home." And now he's trying to sell Cowboy Nation

that this team can be a little better than even last year's team can, even without Omari, without Lyle Collins, without Randy Gregory, because he's still got Mike McCarthy. We can win a Super Bowl with this man sitting right to my right. Please drop the mic, McCarthy. You're kidding, Jerry. Trying to sell ice to the Eskimos again, and maybe you can pull it off. It all makes me feel like I got drunk last night, and I'm about to puke, and I don't even drink.

Jerry Jones is still winning everywhere but in the postseason. And we Cowboy fans can only watch and hope and sigh and cry and cry out, please, Jerry, just do something. And Jerry Jones just keeps grinning from ear to ear and winning while we lose. Only in America or Arkansas. Now it's your turn.

I'm going to try to bang through some questions from you out there, and I do appreciate them because they always make me laugh or think or both. And I start with Dion from Fort Lauderdale who asks, is LeBron defeating Father Time just like you think Tom Brady is? Dion, the answer to that is a big NO. I will give you

that LeBron James had the greatest year 19 last season of any NBA player ever, but that's in large part because not many have lasted or wanted to last as long as LeBron has. I admire his fitness dedication. I admire his commitment to nutrition and warrior workouts. Yet, remember, LeBron is seven years and five months younger than Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr.,

And I do realize it's virtually impossible to compare playing NBA basketball to playing quarterback in the NFL. But LeBron's all-time greatest year 19 was statistically deeply flawed. Yep, 30 a game, eight rebounds a game, six assists a game down from 10.2 two years ago when he led the league in assists. But that 38 and six camouflaged,

Crucial chinks in LeBron's armor, and he's got some body armor on that body of his. But crucial chinks were exposed statistically that Brady had none of last season as he was 44 years of age. So what did we see from LeBron in a nutshell? LeBron last season ranked 15th in the NBA in three-point attempts. That's a lot.

He finished 93rd in three-point shooting by percentage. 93rd in the league. Okay, let's try to compute. 15th most attempts, but 93rd in percentage. That's way too many three-point misses. That's team crushing, as was what happened at the free throw line. LeBron also finished 15th in the NBA in free throw attempts.

Yet in free throw shooting, percentage-wise, he ranked 86th in the league. LeBron, you left way too many points on the table for your team's sake. 15th in attempts from the free throw line, 86th in free throw percentage. Does not compute. And last year, by my calculation, and I watched every single dribble of every game that LeBron played, he had 15 chances late and close to

to close games. No closer gene does LeBron have because I saw him fail 15 times to close games that should have been won. A fairly significant reason why LeBron's Lakers, even though he played only 55 games, finished 33 and 49 and missed the play-in tournament. Not just the playoffs, they missed the play-in tournament.

Last season, Pro Football Focus graded Tom Brady as the best quarterback in the NFL. No chinks in that armor. The best. Number one in the NFL ahead of the MVP Aaron Rodgers by Pro Football Focus's grading scale. Last season, Tom Brady tied his career high with five game-winning drives. Talk about closing. That's the closer, the ultimate closer.

Only a blitz bust and a broken coverage cost Brady's team that playoff game against the eventual Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams. In that game, Tom Brady scored 24 unanswered points to tie the score at 27 all. And then came the bust, and then came Matt Stafford to Cooper Cup, and then came the field goal that beat them.

I'm sorry, Dion. In the end, LeBron is beating Father Time down at one level while Tom Brady, as he now is about to turn 45 on August 3rd, is defeating Father Time at a much higher level. But thanks for the question and the attempt. Let's try Carson from my home state of Oklahoma. Why aren't you a fan of the Thunder if you're from Oklahoma City?

Because number one, the San Antonio Spurs, number two, Russell Westbrook, and number three, the Oklahoma Sooners football team. I did grow up in Oklahoma City. Basketball was my first love. And yet during my high school years, if you told me that Oklahoma City, Oklahoma would have an NBA team, I would have laughed in your face.

We had no more than AAA baseball, the 89ers. We had AAA hockey, or I don't even know if it was AAA. It was just minor league hockey, the Blazers. We went occasionally just to watch the fights. So through the 1980s, obviously no NBA team in my hometown, I slowly but surely became a fan of the San Antonio Spurs, in large part because of George the Iceman Girvin.

One of the greatest in-lane shot creators that league had ever seen. You want to talk about a hezy wrist flip, last-stitch little finger roll that he could pull off over centers and power forwards. It was a gift from the basketball gods. Never seen anything like it. I will admit the thunder started to grow on me, 2010, 11, just because Kevin Durant was taking off and he had already become my favorite player.

But Russell Westbrook spoiled it for me. The more I criticized on national TV, Russell Westbrook for taking more shots than Kevin Durant was taking, the more death threats I started to receive from Thunder fans in my hometown of Oklahoma City. It got so bad that when I covered the 2012 NBA Finals in my hometown, I needed 24-hour bodyguard protection from an LA cop

assigned to me in my hometown, thanks to Thunder fans. And trust me on this, that will sour you on your hometown team. And finally, I was born and raised a diehard University of Oklahoma football fan, a fanatic. So when friends of mine in Oklahoma City started telling me that the Thunder had become more popular than the Sooners football team,

I actually started to take that personally. I began to resent the thunder just because of that. But hey, I don't know. Maybe Chet Holmgren will change all that or maybe not.

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- $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes, see details. - Next up, Greg from Detroit. What's the one thing you cannot leave home without each day? Interesting. Well, obviously my phone, but what human in this world wouldn't say the same thing to that? Yeah, even more important to me, Greg, is my food.

You are what you eat. You are what you take from home to eat through the day. If you're going to eat healthy during the day, to me, you almost have to take it with you, which I do every single day. After I run for an hour on the treadmill from 2:30 a.m. out here in the Pacific time to 3:30, I take a shower and then

I take with me my Metrax RTD shake. That's 51 grams of protein, only five grams of carbs, two grams of fat, three grams of sugar, best drink on the market. And I take a bagel with me. I alternate blueberry or cinnamon raisin. I don't recommend it if you're trying to lose weight or maintain weight without much exercise, but I do that treadmill hard and I need that bagel.

And I love my bagel in the morning as we're putting the show together here on the Fox lot for Undisputed. I also take what's called a sparkling ice. The flavor is black raspberry. That's what I sip during breaks during the show just to keep me hydrated. Sort of flavored water, if you will. And of course, I take with me

one and only one Diet Mountain Dew, the breakfast of champions, the nectar of the gods. I take one 20 ounce bottle, only one to start my engine leading up to the show. I'm not saying it's the greatest thing for you, but it's my only vice, at least in my view. I just love that lemon lime taste and that bite. Can't leave home without that. I also throw in always one Quest Bar,

21 grams of protein, 1 gram of sugar only. That's to eat immediately after the show when I'm pretty famished. After Shannon and I have worn each other out for two and a half hours, my favorite flavor of Quest Bar is chocolate chip cookie dough. For sure, I don't leave home without that. And here we go again. Harry, back to my home state, Norman, Oklahoma, asked me a really tough question.

Who makes up your Dallas Cowboys Mount Rushmore? I must admit, I have lost sleep over this, and I'm still not sure about this. I'm just too close to it. I'm too much of a lifelong diehard, so I argue myself to death. I'm undefeated as a debater, but I can defeat myself. So the first on my Cowboy Rushmore is easy. It's Roger Staubach.

the greatest cowboy quarterback ever, my favorite player ever, somebody I got to know very well. And number two is pretty much a no-brainer for me because I believe Michael Irvin was the greatest receiver ever just on pure clutchness, on leadership, on fire, desire, no-brainer for me. But now it starts to get dicey at three and four. I decided, as I mentioned earlier, I'm going to go with Charles Haley at number three. I know he was a 49er for a long time.

and he was a great one. But the Dallas Cowboys don't win those first two Jimmy Jerry Super Bowls, '92, '93 without Charles Haley. They just don't. He was the closest thing to Lawrence Taylor I have ever seen. And he was very close. He was banged up for the third Super Bowl, but he still played and played very well. So that whole dynastic run was detonated

by Jerry's acquisition of Charles Haley, so he's up there for me. Now we get to the fourth and final slot, and I am extremely conflicted. If we're just going on pure talent, pure aura, pure Hall of Fameness, pure all-time greatness, it's Deion. But Deion came late to Dallas, obviously. He helped the 49ers beat the Cowboys in 94. Then Jerry signed him, and he came over to Dallas,

And he was the reason the Cowboys went back over the top, over the 49ers and the rest of the field to win the 95 season Super Bowl. He's just by far the greatest corner ever. And I love Darrell Rivas, but it ain't close. But after the 95 Super Bowl, Deion got banged up and he sort of faded away. And it's just, I don't know, it just doesn't feel right for him to be on the Cowboy Mount Rushmore.

So from there on, my other choices are I'm going to bang them off. Obviously Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman, then go back a ways, Randy White and Bob Lilly, Leroy Jordan, big fan of his, Cornerstone, Stallworth. Don Meredith was all-time great for those bad getting better teams through the 60s. Drew Pearson made the greatest clutch catches, single catches ever.

famous catches in Cowboy history. Larry Allen was the greatest Cowboy offensive lineman, and of course, Tony Dorsett. If you make me choose for one game, Emmitt Smith or Tony Dorsett, I'm going Dorsett every single time. Much more electrifying, much more dangerous in the open field, and could run hard between the tackles. Underrated as a between the tackles ball pounder. Tony Dorsett at 190-ish pounds.

But in the end, I got to go Emmitt. I got to go. We never got along that great, but I got to go Emmitt, my fourth slot, Mount Rushmore. Even though he did get the duck and dart behind the greatest offensive line I have ever seen. And even though I would take Dorsett in a one-game situation, Emmitt is the all-time leading rusher. And after Jerry made him sweat for that deal in 93 and he missed the first two games, he did come back and win MVP and the MVP of the Super Bowl.

I got to give it to Emmett. So I'll go Roger Staubach, Michael Irvin, Charles Haley, and Emmett Smith. And by tomorrow morning, I might just change my mind. Next up, Joshua from Charlotte. We're getting questions from all over the map. Love it. What is the one game that took place before you signed up for Twitter that you wish you had live tweeted during? Okay.

I hate to turn this into a Dallas Cowboys special, but I'm going to have to go Cowboys again. And I don't see how anybody can argue with me on this one. It's the greatest game I ever covered, ever attended, ever sweated through. It was the 1981 season NFC Championship game. Played in early 1982 at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, Cowboys 49ers. It's just the greatest game I ever saw.

It was the changing of the dynastic guard. It was the beginning of the Montana, the Walsh dynasty. And it was the beginning of the end for the Tom Landry dynasty. It was the catch game. Montana tried to throw it away on third and three from the six as he retreated, sprinted right, the aforementioned two tall Jones in hot pursuit.

D.D. Lewis in hot pursuit, and Montana flung it, tried to throw it in the first row, and Dwight Clark somehow rose up into the Bay Area fog, and he snatched it above a Cowboy rookie named Everson Walls, who became a good friend of mine, set the record that year for Cowboy interceptions. 28-27, 49ers. Then my man Danny White, trying with all his might to fill the winged cleats of one Roger Staubach,

Hit the great Drew Pearson on a deep post. Didn't have a lot of muster on him, but he hit Drew right in the hands as he broke inside. And Eric Wright, a second-round rookie for the 49ers that year, got away with what would now be immediately flagged by five officials. Flags would fly everywhere as a horse collar. He yanked Drew Pearson down from behind by the neck of the jersey. He saved the day.

and poor Danny White got sacked and fumbled on the next play. Game over, dynasty over, a game made for Twitter. Jaylen from New York. "Is there a particular episode of Undisputed that you remember for one reason or another? You bet. Obviously, I must pay homage to the great Ernestine, my wife, because the first time she joined the debate desk in studio,

I was a nervous wreck for the first time and I hope the last time in my career because Ernestine is even more opinionated than I am. She is a spitfire liable to spit all manner of out-of-bounds fire when you least expect it. And remember on Undisputed, we're not live to tape. We're live to live. We are flat out live. You cannot get it back. There's no tape delay.

But the great Ernestine was great that day. No slips of the tongue, perfectly in bounds. And just for the record, I've had lots of memorable moments on Undisputed. Little Wayne moments, Nelly moments, Snoop moments, Kevin Hart moments, moments battling my frenemy, Terrell Owens. But weird as this might sound, I'll go deep here. I'm just going to be honest. The show I remember most...

came early in our run, Shannon and my run here on FS1, only in our second month on air on FS1. This was in 2016, October. In studio, sitting just to my left, was the great Antoine Fuqua, who joined us to talk about the documentary he had done on his beloved 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, Antoine from Pittsburgh.

He lived and died for those pirates of Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell. And yet, as I think you know, I am a lover of movies, a connoisseur and student of movies. And for Antoine Fuqua to sit next to me, it was like sitting next to a godlike figure. You can have all those sports legends who've come and gone through our studio, all the ones I've had on the old show back on ESPN.

All the ones I've interviewed in my newspaper magazine career, you can have them all, but I was in awe of Antoine Fuqua. I mean, Antoine directed Denzel in one of my all-time favorite movies, Training Day, for which Denzel won it all. He won the Academy Award. Then, of course, he directed Denzel again in The Equalizer, great movie, and Equalizer 2, equally great, hard to do.

And there was the vastly underrated Tears of the Sun, Bruce Willis, and that riveting gut-wrenching Brooklyn's Finest. And I could go on and on about Antoine, but I won't. But as soon as I read this question, my psyche flashed back to Antoine Fuqua sitting next to me at the debate desk on Undisputed. Call me crazy. And by the way, just a couple of quick notes.

For those of you who wonder what Ernestine and I have been watching non-sports, the other night we tried The Gray Man featuring our close friend Billy Bob Thornton. Didn't expect much, pleasantly surprised, sensational shootouts. I liked Ryan Gosling as a Jason Bourne. I'll go B+ and I will watch the inevitable sequel.

We also watched The Outfit, maybe a little off-Broadway for many of you, starring the great Mark Rylance. The acting is superb. The script flips. Worth the price of admission, A-. I mentioned this a couple episodes back, but episode is, I'm sorry, Ernstine is hooked on only murders in the building. I'm not, but I must admit, it's growing on me. It's getting better.

And finally, I finally watched on the treadmill on Saturday and Sunday, "Last Night in Soho." Ernstine said no to it from the start, too much blood. I must admit, I really liked it. Edgar Wright got game, but I knew that. And I expected that from Edgar, from his mock horror trilogy that he did early on, and then from "Baby Driver." I was thoroughly entertained from start to finish. Back to you, back to Hal from New York,

Do you score debates on Undisputed like a boxing match, like 10-9, 10-9 per round? Now, of course, out. Every topic we do is not a flat-out debate. Sometimes we just authentically agree on breaking news topics that we have to do, so it's more discussion than debate.

But when we do disagree, we flat out authentically disagree. We do not trick up any debate on the show. There has never ever been, I'll take this side if you can take that side, never ever. So I'm just here to tell you, when we do all out flat out disagree, I do not lose. I have never lost. And it's an upset if I went around only by 10 to 9.

I win nearly every round of a disagreement 10 to 8 by a TKO, if nothing else, because there's always a knockdown. There's almost always some blood, such as the other day. Just a quick example. Shannon tried to defend an anonymous quote in The Athletic in their tier ranking of quarterbacks, saying that Aaron Rodgers has made his teammates better than Tom Brady has made his teammates better.

Shannon tried, and I shredded his argument. I mean, Aaron Rodgers had Devontae Adams for eight years, eight seasons. That's 108 games of Devontae. And over the last, what, four years that they were together, I think we all agreed Devontae was the best receiver in football. Brady did have Randy Moss, but he had him for only 36 games. 36 games versus 108 that Aaron's had Devontae until now. See how that works out.

But this anonymous quote ripped Brady for not developing Nikhil Harry back in New England. And I went for the throat on this one. Brady, if you know what actually happened, had Nikhil for only one year, which was Nikhil's rookie year. First round pick, obviously. But Nikhil was hurt for much of that year with a bad ankle. He started only five games and had very little time left.

or the capability of practicing with Brady, which is everything to Tom Brady, to develop any kind of rapport or timing. I mean, in the end, Tom Brady has won seven Super Bowls in 10 tries and two others he did his part to win. First, Eli, and certainly against Philadelphia. I mean, Tom Brady is 35-12 in the postseason. And that's often been with a bunch of Edelmans and Amendolas. Are you kidding me?

Aaron Rodgers made it to one Super Bowl 11 years ago and he won it. So he's 1-0 in the Super Bowl. He's 11-10 in the postseason. So Brady's 35-12 in the postseason to 11-10 for Aaron Rodgers. And you're telling me that Aaron has developed teammates better than Brady? You're kidding. That's laugh out loud bad. And when I finished, Shannon needed a standing eight count. Okay, I'll take one more.

Morris from Atlanta, you're up. On the last game of the season, would you rather see the Cowboys knock Washington or Philly or the Giants out of the playoffs? Good question. Probably weird answer. So Washington obviously has been our historical arch rival, but I've always had respect for Washington. Obviously used to be the Redskins. I grew up with that.

but I always had respect for the then Redskins. And I had even more respect for the Giants because they were class, they were integrity, they were cornerstone NFL franchise. And I never had a drop of hate for them or for that matter, the Washington team. I just didn't. But my whole life, I have hated the Philadelphia Eagles by far the most of any rival in the division. Ever since weirdly, my mom, when I was a little kid,

attended an Eagles preseason game that was played in Norman. I was in Oklahoma City at the University of Oklahoma Stadium at Owen Field. They played a preseason game there, kind of a barnstorming mission to create new NFL fans. And somehow my mom went to the game. She wasn't much of a sports fan. She decided to buy this cheap little pennant. It was this

this vomity green Eagles pennant that she brought back and said, you want to put this up on your wall? No, I don't. I don't like them. Well, that just stoked my hate even more. I've never liked any of the Eagles players or any of their coaches or especially their cowboy hating fans. And I'll never forget back through the 80s and 90s when I used to travel with the Cowboys and

They would take tours of Cowboy fans on the road to these rivalry games within the division. And the one golden rule was when in Philadelphia, nobody in the tour group wears any Cowboy paraphernalia. No hats, no jerseys, no identification because your life can be in jeopardy back at what used to be called the vet. But I must admit, you're on my show for the first time ever.

My emotions are mixed when it comes to the Eagles because I have nothing but respect for the intangibles of one Jalen Hurts. I find myself rooting for Jalen Hurts because he's such a great young man and such an underrated playmaker and leader. Not a great thrower of the football, just a playmaker and leader. He's Tebow-esque, but he's a better thrower than Tebow ever was. Can hurt you with his legs. Not a speed demon, but...

So strong, both physically and mentally. Nothing but respect. So this time, I guess I'd still rather see the Cowboys knock the Eagles out in the last game, knock them out of the playoffs, because this time, I fear Jalen Hurts' Eagles are the team to beat in the NFC least. That's it for episode 28 in honor of Darren Woodson. Thank you for listening and or watching.

Thanks to Jonathan Berger and his All Pro team for making this show go. Thanks to Tyler Korn for producing. Please remember, Undisputed, every weekday, 9.30 to noon Eastern on FS1, the Skip Bayless Show, every week.