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Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones talks about Patsy Sutton after memorial service
Published: 1/11/2013 5:26 PM
Last Modified: 1/11/2013 6:08 PM

A memorial service was staged Friday for Patsy Sutton, wife of former Oklahoma State basketball coach Eddie Sutton and the mother of sons Steve Sutton (a Tulsa banker), Scott Sutton (Oral Roberts head coach) and Sean Sutton (ORU assistant coach).

Among those who showed up at the First United Methodist Church in downtown Tulsa to pay their respects was Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Eddie Sutton coached at Arkansas -- Jerry Jones’ alma mater -- from 1974-85.

Jones agreed to come to a post-funeral interview area and take questions about the Suttons.

Here’s a transcript of a question-and-answer session:

--What are your memories of the Suttons and, specifically, Patsy Sutton?

Jones: “Of course they were very inspirational to my family. We had the opportunity to meet Patsy and Eddie when they came to Arkansas to coach there. When we bought the Cowboys and I moved to Dallas, Steve Sutton lived in our home for a year and was our housesitter and lived there. He was in here (at a reception) telling me he had a lot of fun.

“As much as I love to come to Oklahoma -- I spent almost 20 years with my main offices here coming and going before (purchasing) the Cowboys -- this was a hard trip today to come up here. She was a wonderful friend. Both have been. We have vacationed with Patsy and had a lot of great laughs, but make no mistake about it. She was such a wonderful, wholesome person that it just hopefully brought out some of the best in you when you were around her, even in casual times, vacations and those kind of times. But she had a way to influence people.”

--Patsy has been been described as the rock of the Sutton family. Is that an accurate description?

Jones: “I think so, but it’s so unique that she would invest so much in their players and I use the term ‘their players’ because she was very involved. As (former Arkansas player) Jim Counce, who spoke for the players (at the memorial service) said, she made lifetime meaningful influences.

“I was sitting besides Frank Broyles who was Eddie and Patsy’s athletic director, if you will. And I reached over when Jim Counce was talking, representing the players, and he was talking about all the lives that Patsy had influenced and I reached over and I said ‘coach (Broyles), you have got to be proud of that. You did bring them in and you brought Patsy to Fayetteville and made that happen.’ And I said, ‘boy, when people invest their life in young people, long after they have forgotten who built these buildings and who did all this other stuff, they will remember the people that built men and women.’ And she was one of them.”

--Doesn’t it take a special woman to be a coach’s wife?

Jones: “Yes. And it does take really somebody special to step up and (get involved in the lives of Eddie’s players) if you will and, take risks with those relationships. As you know, the more you get involved, then the more you get your heart broken. But also it’s a wonderful thing too and she was fearless in that area and just really influenced a lot of lives. To me, that’s one of the really great potentials and things about sports. The right people can influence positively a lot of lives.”


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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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