Jerry Jones, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, was all smiles at a Halloween party this weekend. But the NFL may not find his recent antics all that funny.

Jones arrived dressed as a blind NFL umpire, complete with dark sunglasses, a striped shirt and a walking stick. His niece snapped a photo for her social, and it went viral shortly after.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wearing the epic Halloween costume for trolls. A blind ref.
Heap @nfl has a sense of humor pic.twitter.com/WkZyjmDj1J

— Clarence Hill Jr (@clarencehilljr) October 30, 2022

The joke was clearly from the umpires, who are routinely criticized by owners, players and fans for their questionable calls on the pitch.

The problem is that the NFL has rules when it comes to throwing shade at the men in black and white.

A memo from the 2019 competition states:

“Comments regarding the quality of the umpire, individual calls or missed calls, the league on-duty division, an on-duty team, or an individual match official accusing match officials of bias or in any way questioning the integrity of NFL game officials; or posting negative or derogatory/humiliating content related to service on social media.”

Jerry Jones responds to the controversy

When asked by Illustrated Sports when he fooled the refs, Jones cried foul.

“I am very careful here because I am very close to a fine,” he said. “It shows how much I love them to dress up as them…how much I respect their decision-making. I had the stick and everything. And I also used it on some people.”

Stephen Jones, who is CEO and Executive VP of the Cowboys, came in defense of his father sports radio show“I really think she [the refs] understand you can have some humor with this stuff but i can’t imagine they don’t think there is nothing but respect that comes out of the cowboys organization in terms of how hard their job is and what a good job they do .”

At the time of going to press, the NFL had not publicly responded to Costumegate.