Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was fined $100,000 for talking about CBA negotiations when he shouldn’t have been, and his team lost $10 million in cap space for treating the 2010 uncapped year as if it were actually uncapped. (Go figure.) But Jones reportedly won’t be disciplined for an apparent violation of the league’s tampering policy.
Chris Mortensen of ESPN reports that the Cowboys won’t face tampering charges as a result of a phone call between Jones and Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. Although Peterson reportedly told Jones that Peterson would like to play for the Cowboys at some point and Jones failed to immediately report the call to the Vikings, no action will be taken.
Per Mortensen, Jones asked his general counsel, Jason Cohen, to call the Vikings after the story emerged. (Which probably is a better duty than cleaning Jerry’s glasses.)
The story emerged because a writer for ESPN The Magazine was present for the call, and because ESPN made a huge deal about the conversation. It’s fitting that ESPN would ultimately be the outlet to report that the thing ESPN painted as a really big deal wasn’t.