Folks in northern Louisiana like to refer to Bert Jones, the former Baltimore Colts and Los Angeles Rams quarterback, as "Bert, who's next to dirt." They don't mean it in a negative sense but as a compliment: Jones is in harmony with the Louisiana land he strives to preserve. "My father taught me to enjoy the outdoors in a consumptive and nonconsumptive way," says Jones, who grew up hunting and fishing around his Ruston home and has committed much of his post-NFL life to the conservation of his state's public lands.
A jones for football was another thing passed from father to son. Bert's dad, Dub, was a record-setting wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns from 1948 to '55 and was an assistant coach with the team from 1963 to '67, when Bert was a Browns ball boy. "Adjusting to the NFL as a player wasn't that hard, because I grew up in it," says Jones, now 46. "Guys like Paul Warfield weren't just great players to me; they were friends. Same with Jim Brown. I washed his jock and cleaned his locker every day."
As far as Colts fans were concerned, Jones couldn't carry Johnny Unitas's jock after Bert was drafted out of LSU in 1973 to succeed the Baltimore legend. The team was rebuilding and won only six games in Jones's first two years, but then he led the Colts to three straight AFC East titles. Jones threw for 59 touchdowns with only 28 interceptions in that span. His best season was '76, when he threw for 3,104 yards and 24 touchdowns. "We played as a team," says Jones, who still lives in Ruston, with his wife, Danielle, and their four children. "We didn't have that look-at-me individual attitude that you see today."
But all eyes were on Jones in '82, when a contract dispute ended with Baltimore's trading him to L.A. He played four games with the Rams before a neck injury forced him to retire. Jones returned to Louisiana and with his older brother, Bill, opened a lumber treatment mill.
In 1989 Jones was appointed to the state's Wildlife and Fisheries Commission. During his first visit to the commission's offices, which occupied a highly desirable French Quarter building in New Orleans, Jones said, "Let's sell this place and buy some dirt." The property was sold for $24 million, and that money went toward the purchase of 200,000 acres of land for public use. "The goal was to maintain property and protect wildlife," Jones says. "Being a good steward for the land is the norm for a Jones."
—by Richard Deutsch
photograph by Neil Leifer
Issue date: September 1, 1997
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