weekend football

My brother and I watched the Dallas Cowboys play the New York Giants in the NFC divisional playoff game this past Sunday. The playoffs have not been kind to Cowboy quarterback Tony Romo. Last season, in his first playoff game, Romo bobbled the snap on a last second field goal that would have won the game for the Cowboys.

This year however, the Cowboys entered the playoffs as the #1 seed in the NFC (the historically stronger conference) and would play their first game at home against a team they had already beaten twice during the regular season. The Cowboys entered the game as a 7.5 point favorite, but lost by 4. In part because their offense was shut down in the fourth quarter.

This season Romo has been criticized by the football media for constantly being in the public eye. The Dallas media especially felt that his romances with pop stars Carrie Underwood, and more recently Jessica Simpson were an unwanted distraction from football.

The criticism came to a boil in the week before the Giants game after Romo spent the previous weekend in Mexico vacationing with Simpson rather than in Dallas preparing for the game.

After the loss, everyone knew what was coming when an emotional Romo took the podium at the Cowboys’ post-game press conference. After answering several questions about the Cowboys’ inability to score in the second half, a reporter from the Dallas star asked,

“Tony, I’ve just been told that Jessica Simpson was seen walking into Bob’s Steakhouse, by herself, and asked to be seated under a reservation in the name of ‘Manning party of two.’ Would you like to comment on that?”