Jerry Jones risked everything — his oil fortune, his reputation, his family's security — to buy the Dallas Cowboys for $150 million in 1989. The team was losing a million dollars a month. Most thought he was insane. But Jones saw what others didn't: the untapped goldmine of America's sport. He went to battle with the NFL over sponsorships, bringing in Nike and Pepsi when the league said he couldn't. The lawsuits were heated. But Jones was right. Today, the Cowboys are worth over $12 billion, according to CNBC calculations. In a rare conversation with CNBC's Michael Ozanian, recorded in September, Jones revealed the meeting that convinced him to bet it all, why he's embracing private equity's entrance to the NFL, and what he learned from media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Nike co-founder Phil Knight about empire building. But there's an uncomfortable truth: It's been nearly three decades since the Cowboys were last in the Super Bowl. Jones has a metaphor for that. The Cowboys, he says, are "like a room with an inch of lighter fluid all over it." They're just waiting for the match.

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