Cowboys owner Jerry Jones reportedly to be hit with largest fine in NFL history

It looks like the feud between Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell isn't quite over.

According to the New York Times, Goodell is expected fine to Jones "millions of dollars" in a move that the NFL is expected to announce at some point over the next few weeks. Although the Times didn't specify the amount of the fine, anything in the "millions" would make it the largest fine in NFL history.

The biggest fine ever handed out by the league was $1 million, and the NFL has done that twice. Former 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo was fined that amount for the part he played in a Louisiana gambling scandal in the late 1990s. The Patriots were also hit with a $1 million fine after the NFL completed its Deflategate investigation in May 2015.

It seems that Goodell had been on the fence about punishing Jones. On one hand, he didn't want it to look like a revenge move; however, it appears that other NFL owners convinced him to go through with the punishment because Jones had broken "an unspoken boundary by threatening his colleagues."

Apparently, Jones is going to be hit with a bigger penalty because the league's owners are upset with the way Jones acted over the past eight months. According to the Times, Goodell wasn't happy about the way Jones defended Ezekiel Elliott after the Cowboys running back was suspended in August. Also, the league's owners were irate about the way Jones acted when the league's compensation committee started the process of putting together a new contract for the commissioner.

Jones' push to stop the extension started on Oct. 26 when he took over a conference call with his fellow owners and asked them to halt the extension even though the league had already voted on the issue. Back in May, all 32 owners, including Jones, voted to authorize the compensation committee to move forward with negotiations.

By November, things had gotten so bad that Jones threatened to sue the NFL and the league's compensation committee over Goodell's extension. Although he's not a voting member of the compensation committee, Jones sent a letter to his fellow owners where he requested they hold "a special league meeting" so the group could discuss Goodell's proposed contract extension. Basically, Jones wanted to talk them out of a doing a deal.

Things actually got so bad between Jones and the NFL that the league's other owners were reportedly looking at a nuclear option that would have involved taking the Cowboys away from Jones. Although that didn't happen, the NFL did send a letter to Jones and his attorney where the league accused the Cowboys owner of "conduct detrimental to the league's best interests."

Despite the protesting from Jones, Goodell's five-year contract extension was approved in December.

The feud between Goodell and Jones appears to have started when Goodell called Jones on Aug. 9 to inform him that Elliott would be suspended for six games. According to a story from ESPN, Jones basically responded with a threat.

"I'm gonna come after you with everything I have," Jones said. Then he mentioned Deflategate. "If you think Bob Kraft came after you hard, Bob Kraft is a p---y compared to what I'm going to do."

The Elliott case is a big reason that Jones will be facing such a large fine. According to the Times, the NFL wants some money back from the Cowboys owner. As part of the fine, Jones will be asked to pay the legal fees of the compensation committee and also the legal fees that the NFL had to pay during the three months (August to November) where they had to defend the Elliott suspension in court.

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