Jerry Jones told reporters this week he would be open to selling his stake in the Dallas Cowboys, the first time in thirty-seven years of ownership he has said the sentence out loud. Jones bought the team from Bum Bright on February 25, 1989, for $140 million. Forbes now values the Cowboys at $13 billion, the highest figure in the NFL, which means the man who once mortgaged nearly everything he owned to buy a football team is sitting on a return of roughly 9,185 percent. Mark Cuban's name is already attached to the speculation about who writes the next check.

Here is the arithmetic nobody needs a calculator for: that $13 billion valuation was built almost entirely without a Super Bowl since January 1996, which tells you the Cowboys stopped being a football team and became a media company that occasionally plays football on the side. Jones did that on purpose, selling out AT&T Stadium suites and Cowboys Network rights while the roster went three decades between championships. A sale, if it happens, values the brand recognition over the banner count, and the next owner inherits a fan base that has made peace with exactly that trade.