We’re a few weeks away from—my guess—Micah Parsons signing a deal that makes him the highest-paid nonquarterback in NFL history, hours before the Cowboys take on the Eagles on the opening night of the NFL season, thus completing the wire-to-wire absurdist one-man show that an 82-year-old with all worldly goods at his disposal still desires to put on to make himself feel interesting.
Unfortunately, Parsons is out of options after last-Friday’s double-whammy of a sourced report detailing his unhappiness followed by a trade request that was longer than your average middle school Bluebook essay. Jones will get to needle his star pass rusher, casually paint him as greedy and unresponsive and feed his base the kind of dated us vs. them slop that has been part of his stump speech for decades.
That is, unless Parsons gets creative. I’m not saying his agency isn’t doing a great job, but when you’re battling a Texas oil man who has, likely, at some point in his life come into hand-to-hand combat with a rattlesnake—or made up a story that he has—you’re going to have to learn to fight dirty.
Here are five ways Parsons can take Jones to the mat and get him to end this ridiculous farce of a negotiation early and save our Labor Day weekend from any inkling of Cowboys-related news.
1. Start attending team meetings and weighing in loudly in a Delco accent
Accent changes are jarring. While I won’t name names, I once covered a game in the U.K. and saw a retired-player-turned-analyst speaking in a full-on British accent to a group of people off camera. Stunned, I asked the player whether he had always been British but I just didn’t know, since I had known him to not have a British accent. He very sheepishly walked away and we never spoke again.
Anyway, having Parsons show up and start calling the white cotton things that dangle off his belt loop “taaals,” or suggest that Brian Schottenheimer order some “wooder ice” for the guys because after practice they’ll be thirsty, would absolutely freak out enough people to necessitate the immediate signing of a contract. This could be part of a larger plan by Parsons, a Penn State graduate and native of Harrisburg, Pa., to continue transforming into a Philadelphia man in stages, kind of like Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf. Maybe one day wear a Bobby Abreu jersey to the facility with some AND1 sneakers. Another day? Direct most, if not all, conversations toward certain obscure pastries or discuss, in vivid detail, a fight that you won in high school that no one can prove the validity of.
Jones cannot have a star of his team becoming a Philadelphian when he should be adapting the culture of the Wild West.
2. Commission a highly intricate but painfully detailed oil painting of Jones in an ill-fitting toga and immediately lend the work to one of the largest museums in the world
I recently finished The Crown and can’t stop thinking about the episode where Winston Churchill finally sees the incredibly humbling and unattractive portrait of himself. There’s something about rich people and paintings that really sets the stage for fireworks. Like Dwyane Wade’s statue in Miami, right? Rich people have access to everything, but turning over their likeness to the interpretation of an actual creative, the kind of person whom billionaires would never associate with or listen to, is one of the better high-class tête-à-tête in existence. It’s like handing someone a dirty mirror for the first time and there’s no cleaner on earth that will make it better.
Parsons certainly has the means. An unknown up-and-comer will cost roughly $1,000, according to Reddit, with some of the bigger names stretching into the hundreds of thousands. Either way, the avenue is to hit the rich people where it really hurts—at black tie functions where one can get sniffle-laughed at by an heir to a toothpaste fortune because they look a little wrinkly. In many ways, it’s the sharpest knife.
The move effectively takes the game out of Jones’s court, where he has been owner, general manager, referee and landlord for decades, free to say whatever he wants and silence those who disagree.
3. Purchase a large swath of Texas land and build hundreds of windmills, educating Texans on the power of clean energy
You’ve all seen—and ignored—those eager-eyed college students standing out front of Pita Pit with fliers suggesting you think about converting to solar energy or purchase a car that runs on excess peanut oil. But imagine Parsons, in his own Cowboys jersey, waging a miniature grassroots campaign against the Cowboys’ owner, whose mineral rights business brings in a vast majority of his wealth.
Look at all these ranches for sale! Where are all the actual Cowboys? Doesn’t anyone want to live at the *checks notes* “Exotic Ranch” in *checks notes again* UTOPIA, TEXAS?! If I had a million dollars, I would fly down to Texas and inquire about purchasing a ranch just to discuss the matter with a realtor wearing a gigantic cattleman hat, desperately working to get me to still take him seriously despite the fact that he looks like a hot dog too small for his respective bun.
Anyway, Parsons could easily buy one of these and set the whole thing up to run on wind power, or hydrogen power, or on the bones of dead cockroaches … whatever. Just fully immerse himself into the clean energy movement and see if he can rile up the league’s own Jed Clampett in the process.
4. Sign Jerry Jones’s initial lowball offer and then immediately change your name to Texas “Doof” McDingDong: The Ultimate Cowboy
Within the contract, sneak in a provision that if Jones, Schottenheimer or any member of the Cowboys Radio Network calls you anything but “Texas ‘Doof’ McDingDong: The Ultimate Cowboy” they have to pay you $100,000 in cash. By the time Micah Par—sorry, Texas “Doof” McDingDong: The Ultimate Cowboy—is finished with his career, he’ll have amassed so much money (given that Jones can’t even get his current legal name, Micah, correct) that it will more than make up the difference between the contract Jones wanted and the one Parsons rightfully deserved. Plus, for all of eternity, The Star, all of its tours, merchandising, broadcast mentions, Hall of Fame compendiums and more, couldn’t be completed without regaling young fans about the exploits of ole Doof McDingDong.
The league put OCHOCINCO on the back of actual jerseys, right?
5. Start bragging about how well you sleep on a DreamCloud Mattress
Let’s get straight to the nuclear option. When you want to get to Jerry Jones, you get to the NFL. And if you want to get to the NFL, you start enjoying a luxurious night’s rest on a hybrid memory foam mattress with optimal sleep support. And if you can only get that perfect night of sleep you won’t stop talking about in every press availability from a direct competitor to the Dak Prescott–endorsed, official league sponsor, Sleep Number … then so be it.
No one said contractual battles were easy—or clean.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Five Creative Ways Micah Parsons Can Escalate His Feud With Jerry Jones.