Jerry Jones donates $10.65 million to Razorbacks

Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys and former Arkansas athlete, right, speaks with Jeff Long, athletics director at the University of Arkansas, Friday, June 6, 2014, during the Frank and Barbara Broyles Foundation Caregivers United inaugural benefit golf scramble at Paradise Valley Golf andÊAthletic Club in Fayetteville.

— The family of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has made a donation valued at $10.65 million to the University of Arkansas athletics department.

Jones, a UA alumnus, donated 256 acres of land in southwest Fayetteville to the Razorback Foundation earlier this month. According to property records, Jones paid $7.3 million for the land from Chambers Bank after a foreclosure. An independent UA appraisal valued the land at $8.65 million.

In addition to the land, the Jones family donated $2 million to the Razorback Foundation, which is the university's private fundraising arm for athletics.

According to a release from the university, the money will help support a student-athlete academic center and dining hall that is currently being constructed on the UA campus. The center, which could cost up to $23 million, will be named after Jones and his wife, Gene, while the locker room in the Razorbacks' football center will be named after Jones' son, Stephen.

The money will also be used to erect a monument alongside Razorback Road commemorating the football program's 1964 national championship team. The 6-foot-tall, 30-foot-wide and 14-foot-long statue will be placed in front of the football center and depict six wild razorbacks.

Jerry Jones was a starting offensive lineman for the national championship team in 1964. Stephen Jones, the Cowboys' chief operating officer, played linebacker for the Razorbacks in the 1980s.