DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Texas should secede!

Stop choosing to be homosexual!

Because you can't live without a product that holds 12 times its weight in water, buy a ShamWow!

And atop the list of the world's most irrational, nonsensical calls to action, Jerry Jones the owner should fire Jerry Jones the general manager!

I know, in the wake of an 8-8 season that flat-lined with last Sunday night's 31-14 loss to the New York Giants you have to be mad at somebody. Because simply not being good enough is no longer an acceptable reason for failure, there must be blame. There has to be a goat.

And when in doubt, slide up the chain of command and flog the guy at the top. Yep, Jerry Jones.

Did Jones have a good season as general manager of the Cowboys? Nope. He made a training-camp play for Nnamdi Asomugha that failed. He prematurely awarded lucrative contracts to Doug Free, Orlando Scandrick and Gerald Sensabaugh. And for the second straight season he fielded the NFL's highest payroll for a team that failed to win 9 games.

Go ahead, scream from the top of Dallas' new Omni Hotel all you want. The Cowboys have won only one playoff game the last 15 years. In their last 240 games, they are 120-120. A franchise that won three Super Bowls in four years is these days mired in mediocrity.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm merely saying you're pitchin' pebbles at the castle walls. Until his final, gasping words are "Stephen, it's yours", Jones will control the Cowboys as owner, president and general manager.

For the gazillionth time last week, Jones reiterated his Dallas dictatorship.

"The thing you've got to realize is that when you have an owner that is full-time as the owner, then you create a situation where you have as much turnover at GM as you do at the coaching level," Jones said on the Cowboys' flagship radio station, 105.3 The Fan. "And I think that just deters from the mix."

You really wish donuts led to washboard abs. You'd like to have the panache to date a Kardashian. And you'd prefer if Jones loosened his death grip and hired a "football man" as the team's primary talent evaluator and decision-maker. None, of course, stand an icicle's chance in El Paso.

It was a disappointing season. Even the head coach will admit that.

"We finished 8-8 and didn't make the post-season and that's unacceptable," says Jason Garrett. "Our standards are much higher than that."

Actually, the standards have been lowered. Where once upon a time it was genuinely Super-Bowl-or-bust, this year a win over the Giants and a 9-7 NFC East championship would've been labeled success. The reason? Sub-par players. When Rob Ryan gets similar results as Wade Phillips with a defense littered with high-priced free agents and lofty draft picks, at some point it's the players' fault. And that means, of course, blame the knuckleheads who acquired the underachieving players.

Talent evaluation is a dicey proposition. Bill Parcells drafted Bobby Carpenter. Jimmy Johnson thought Alexander Wright could play. And the New England Patriots put stock into Albert Haynesworth. Difference in Dallas is that Jones doesn't get fired for mistakes, as did the Rams' Billy Devaney, the Bears' Jerry Angelo and the Colts' Bill Polian after this season.

"I'd call on the very same kinds of influence and people and the information that someone like Bill Polian does," Jones said. "The way it's structured and the way it is, our fans need to understand that I have the ability to go get anybody and any bit of information that there is, sports or football, and I do. I go get it. We get it from a lot of sources."

Jones isn't the sole voice in Dallas' player personnel decisions. He has scouts. Experienced voices. Knowledgeable football minds. To say he vetoes unanimous opinions and makes isolated moves is ludicrous.

If so, he gets credit for three Super Bowls in 22 years on the job. How's that sound, Philadelphia Eagles' fans? In Cincinnati three titles since '89 gets you a statue. In Dallas it gets you a cigarette and a blindfold.

Since the GM lives in a results-based business, let's look at Jones' ledger. Since the Cowboys last won a Super Bowl (XXX in the '95 season) Jones has overseen 16 drafts and 129 picks. It's a subjective business, but I broke the picks down into two categories: Hits and Misses.

Decisions like trading two first-round picks for Joey Galloway in 2000 and two high picks and a contract extension for Roy Williams notwithstanding, Jones is about a .300 hitter. Great in baseball. Mediocre for an NFL GM.

With my eyes – I've covered the team since Jones stepped foot in Valley Ranch in February of 1989 – the Cowboys have had 37 hits and 92 misses (29%) on all draft picks since 1996. A better gauge is the top picks, so let's look at Jones' record on Dallas' first overall selections.

1996: Kavika Pittman        MISS
1997: David LaFleur           MISS
1998: Greg Ellis                     HIT
1999: Ebenezer Ekuban   MISS
2000: Dwayne Goodrich    MISS
2001: Quincy Carter           MISS
2002: Roy Williams            HIT
2003: Terence Newman     HIT
2004: Julius Jones                MISS
2005: DeMarcus Ware       HIT
2006: Bobby Carpenter     MISS
2007: Anthony Spencer     MISS
2008: Felix Jones                HIT
2009: Jason Williams         MISS
2010: Dez Bryant               HIT
2011: Tyron Smith             HIT

That's 9 of 16 top picks that didn't pan out. Inexplicable. That, more than anything, is why the Cowboys have deteriorated. And why frustrations with Jones have escalated.

The Cowboys aren't in great shape headed to 2012, either. Coming off a season in which they beat only one winning team (49ers) and beat three that fired their coaches (Buccaneers, Dolphins and Rams), they'll have $28 million in dead money next year and are faced with tough off-season choices on declining veterans like Terence Newman, Martellus Bennett, Anthony Spencer, Bradie James and Keith Brooking.

Like it or not, Jones will be the man pulling the trigger on all of those choices.

"The facts are that I've spent 22 years doing this exactly the same way," Jones said. "I've made a lot of changes from year to year as time goes along, but frankly, I know that when we do not have the kind of success, when we don't have expectations lived up to, the one that should get the most heat is the one that ultimately makes the decisions, period, with the Dallas Cowboys. And that's me."

In the last 15 years the Cowboys have had six head coaches and as many playoff wins as general managers, one.

Jones isn't doing a great job. But he's got the safest gig in America.

Gripe all you want, he'll never fire himself.

Crappy New Year!