Questions for Dallas Cowboys archivist

[fgoodwin]

Jonathan Thorn, the archivist for the Dallas Cowboys, is doing a talk at the Fort Worth Central Library at 10:30 am on Saturday, October 7. I am driving up from San Antonio to attend. Are there any questions you would like me to ask him?

[Rupert Patrick]

I have one - Does he have any information on a local archive for the 1952 Dallas Texans football team? Does he have any idea where all the documents, gamebooks, photos, press releases, etc. went when the team was suddenly taken over by the NFL? I can't imagine all that stuff was boxed up and sent to Hershey, PA, which was the Texans base of operations when they became a nomadic team.

[NWebster]

Guessing you're there right now. I'd love to know Expert's question as well as whether it's true that they have films of every game going back to day one.

[Apbaball]

They told me once they thought that had their unofficial sack stats on a computer file somewhere but they didn't know where. They were going to get back to me if they found them but never did. I may have to contact them again to follow up.

The Redskns sent me what they had for the 1970s a few years ago. I also got the Falcons from 1977 from Atlanta.

[fgoodwin]

I have one - Does he have any information on a local archive for the 1952 Dallas Texans football team? Does he have any idea where all the documents, gamebooks, photos, press releases, etc. went when the team was suddenly taken over by the NFL? I can't imagine all that stuff was boxed up and sent to Hershey, PA, which was the Texans base of operations when they became a nomadic team.

He was not aware of any archive of 1952 Dallas Texans materials. He did say the Cowboys have a letter written to Clint Murchison back in the 50s about Murchison's interest in buying an NFL team but nothing specifically by or about the 1952 Texans,

[fgoodwin]

Guessing you're there right now. I'd love to know Expert's question as well as whether it's true that they have films of every game going back to day one.

He said they do have game film from every game (including preseason) going back to and including 1960. However, these are not game films like the DVRs of network broadcasts. These are offense/defense/special teams specific film reels. They do plan to digitize these but probably won't put them online due to the cost of hosting so much video and bandwidth required for downloads. Digital video will be made available to researchers and NFL Films, etc.

[fgoodwin]

They told me once they thought that had their unofficial sack stats on a computer file somewhere but they didn't know where. They were going to get back to me if they found them but never did. I may have to contact them again to follow up.

The Redskns sent me what they had for the 1970s a few years ago. I also got the Falcons from 1977 from Atlanta.

They have posted most if not all of their game books at media.dallascowboys.com I haven't looked at them, but I assume you could glean sack stats from the gamebooks?

[fgoodwin]

By the way, one of the questions I had was:

Can they post the gamebooks and flip cards for all the preseason games, dating back to 1960? The answer was no.

They have all the gamebooks and flip cards, but preseason is very low on the priority list due to costs, bandwidth, etc. And he was refreshingly honest about the reasons: Jerry wants to make money, and even though fans would love to see many things online (like team-issued portraits, for example. Another of my requests), there is no way for Jerry to monetize such things, so they get a lower priority (which means "no").

Archivist Jonathan Thorne is on twitter if you want to send him your requests: @jrthorne0

[Rupert Patrick]

By the way, one of the questions I had was:

Can they post the gamebooks and flip cards for all the preseason games, dating back to 1960? The answer was no.

They have all the gamebooks and flip cards, but preseason is very low on the priority list due to costs, bandwidth, etc. And he was refreshingly honest about the reasons: Jerry wants to make money, and even though fans would love to see many things online (like team-issued portraits, for example. Another of my requests), there is no way for Jerry to monetize such things, so they get a lower priority (which means "no").

Archivist Jonathan Thorne is on twitter if you want to send him your requests: @jrthorne0

I can think of an eight letter response to Jerry's statement, the first four letters are BULL. For one thing, according to Forbes Magazine, Jerry bought a team 28 years ago for 150 million dollars that now has a net worth of 4.2 billion dollars, which means he CAN do things like put the rest of the game books and team portraits online for very little cost, but won't do so because he won't make even more money off it. In the case of the game books, he already has over 95 percent or so of all the game books up already from what I can tell, but it will somehow cost too much to put the rest of them up?

[BD Sullivan]

By the way, one of the questions I had was:

Can they post the gamebooks and flip cards for all the preseason games, dating back to 1960? The answer was no.

They have all the gamebooks and flip cards, but preseason is very low on the priority list due to costs, bandwidth, etc. And he was refreshingly honest about the reasons: Jerry wants to make money, and even though fans would love to see many things online (like team-issued portraits, for example. Another of my requests), there is no way for Jerry to monetize such things, so they get a lower priority (which means "no").

Archivist Jonathan Thorne is on twitter if you want to send him your requests: @jrthorne0

I can think of an eight letter response to Jerry's statement, the first four letters are BULL. For one thing, according to Forbes Magazine, Jerry bought a team 28 years ago for 150 million dollars that now has a net worth of 4.2 billion dollars, which means he CAN do things like put the rest of the game books and team portraits online for very little cost, but won't do so because he won't make even more money off it. In the case of the game books, he already has over 95 percent or so of all the game books up already from what I can tell, but it will somehow cost too much to put the rest of them up?

But he was so sincere when he knelt with his players--as he looked at where the nearest camera was...