January 25, 2023
I have always been a Tony Romo apologist. This is a rare statement for a Cowboy fan to make, as most of the Cowboy fans I know disliked him during his career, or at least blamed him for that particular period of the team’s almost 30-years of embarrassing underachievement. You know, pretty much how Dak Prescott is blamed now. He was by no means the first athlete to be great enough to be crucial for the team to have any chance of success, but to be the first one blamed when the team didn’t meet the expectations of the fans to win it all. And I will be the first to admit that both sides have a point.
One part of the negativity surrounding Romo the player was the fact that he once lost a playoff game when he flat-out dropped the snap as the holder for a chip-shot game-winning field goal attempt. The opposite of a clutch move, to be sure, even though it was as a holder, not as a quarterback. Another problem was that he never seemed to be as great as the best quarterbacks of his era: Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, and of course the odious and overrated Tom Brady, not to mention being overshadowed by multiple Super Bowl winners Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning. There were several times where Romo seemed to lack the will to win the big game, like when he threw an interception against Washington to lose the last game of the season to miss the playoffs. But at other times he displayed incredible toughness, like when he kept his team’s playoff hopes alive with a heroic game-winning performance with a herniated disc, or when he came from behind to beat the 49ers with a punctured lung. Me? I always liked him, and hoped and prayed each season that he would be the one to take us to the Super Bowl.
Enter the 2014 season. Romo was still only 34 years old, with about five or so years left to try to win a Super Bowl for the Cowboys, as well as enough time to make a strong case for the Hall of Fame. He was unquestionably on the outside looking in on Canton, but some combination of high level of play, and more importantly, playoff success, would make a decent base case even more compelling. It was a great season, sure enough, and Romo balled out. The Cowboys won the division and Romo’s regular season performance earned him legitimate MVP consideration (he finished 3rd in the voting).
In the playoffs, the Cowboys won the Wild Card game and then travelled to Lambeau field to play the Packers in the Divisional Round. I don’t even want to talk about that game. It was too heartbreaking and I’ve already spilled enough ink writing about it. I am linking to this clip, but I’ve honestly never watched it. A big hairy donkey cock might appear in the video 30 seconds in, but I would never know it, as I literally cannot bear to watch any moment of that game. Here goes one last time: in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter, down by five, Romo completed a miracle 30 yard pass on 4th down to Dez Bryant, setting up the Cowboys for first and goal from the 1 yard line, putting the Cowboys in a great position to win the game.
This was literally going to be the defining moment in Tony Romo’s career. He clutched up when it mattered and was poised to be a hero. With one pass, he had exorcised ten years of doubts—Tony Romo was now the Man. It was a pass and catch that would be regarded—not just among Cowboys fans, but all football fans—as one of the best in playoff history.
That defining moment lasted about three minutes. After a commercial break, the referee in that game, a guy who goes by the name Gene Steratore, stood in front of the Packers home crowd and announced, “After review, it has been determined that the receiver did not maintain possession of the football…” Who determined it? Gene Fucking Steratore. And it was an abysmal decision, the Worst Call in NFL History.
This cannot be casually dismissed as part of the game, a mistake, a bad rule, a grey area situation. This was a Travesty. And, as I’ve written before, the injustice was administered by a person who was not held accountable in any way, but rather celebrated and promoted to a position of higher, more public stature. Thus an Injustice was elevated to a Moral Abomination.
After the Steratore game, Tony Romo played only one more full year, and then got hurt for the first half of the 2016 season, which led to Dak Prescott stepping in as starting quarterback of the Cowboys. Romo retired at the end of that season. There would be no Super Bowl and (likely) no Hall of Fame for Romo.
Welcome to 2023. Tony Romo has moved on and has done quite well for himself. He is the lead analyst in the booth for each week’s top NFL game on CBS. He has already called two Super Bowls, and is in the 2nd year of a 10-year $180 million contract. He is regarded as one of the best analysts working games today. Although many fans complain that he can be annoying (he really doesn’t shut the fuck up, does he?), even if that were true, you can complain all you want, the alternative is probably worse. Look at what happened when Troy Aikman went to ESPN. Just watch how bad Tom Brady will be in the booth next year. In any event, Tony Romo has a good gig and seems generally content.
Along with Tony Romo, the play-by-play call is handled by TV veteran Jim Nantz. Since you don’t even think about Jim Nantz, and because you are generally aware of what is going on during each game, Jim Nantz is doing a great job. There is a third person in the booth during each game, however, and he is referred to as the “Rules Analyst.” And for CBS that person’s name is Gene Steratore. That’s right. The same Gene Steratore who personally derailed Tony Romo’s career. The same person who, through a diseased moral lens and senseless abuse of perceived authority, single-handedly ruined Tony Romo’s legacy.
This raises an obvious question: How on Earth are Tony Romo and Gene Steratore able to co-exist and work together each and every week of the NFL season?
I have asked myself this question many times, figuring that maybe Gene Steratore was just doing the games from the studio, or from New York, or from his house. He is generally called upon to speak two or three times a game, and only then as a floating head on the TV screen—why make him travel to a game each week? But then, during Sunday’s playoff game between the Bills and the Bengals, I saw him physically there in the booth, standing five-feet away from—who else—Tony Romo! Everyone was smiling their asses off.
The wild part about their on-screen interaction was that it took place right after another ridiculous overturning of a clear catch that was initially ruled a completion on the field. Bengals receiver Ja’marr Chase caught a touchdown pass in the back of the end zone, which was being reviewed (“all scoring plays are reviewed” – why?). To be fair, it was not as clear and obvious a catch as Dez Bryant’s—compared to this one, Dez Bryant ingested the ball—but it was still a catch. They showed the replay ten times and Tony Romo initially firmly said it looked like a catch (because it was). Then they asked Gene Steratore for his opinion and he predictably did his thing, the thing he invented, Patent Pending, where he micro-analyzed the play in super slow motion and found air between the hand and the ball during one split second and therefore, per Gene, the play was going to be overturned. You see, Gene Steratore is able to predict what the officials will do because they all come from the same School of Complete Jack-holes Who Couldn’t Catch a Football If It Was Shoved Right Up Their Anuses. How often do we get to use the plural of that word?
(Quick aside: the fact that Tony Romo and Jim Nantz have been conditioned to not trust themselves to assess the action they’re seeing on the field—not about the rules, mind you, but about what their senses are sensing—is inexplicable. He’s the “Rules Analyst,” not the “Laws of Physics Analyst.” Does Gene Steratore have Superhero Vision? These are football plays. Passes and catches. Why does anyone, let alone a 14-year league veteran, need to defer to Gene Steratore to tell us whether another set of human hands had control of a football? We all have fucking eyes! But that’s a rant for another day. This one is about Tony Romo being a loser.)
When the referee confirmed that the initial ruling was reversed and that it was an incomplete pass, Tony Romo said, I swear to God, “I think it’s the correct call. Good job, Gene. You were dead on it.” Then right after the next commercial break, the broadcast showed them all yucking it up in the booth together, at which point Tony Romo said this about Steratore, “He’s the best.”
Before I try to unpack Tony Romo’s public praise of Gene Steratore, specifically, praise for his ability to decipher whether something is a catch or not (of all things!), consider for a moment how Dez Bryant must have felt if he was watching that game on TV, or Head Coach Jason Garrett, or any member of that ill-fated team. These were Romo’s teammates! If I felt a sense of visceral betrayal as a casual fan in that moment, how did those other guys who were infinitely more impacted by the Steratore call feel?
But why, Tony? Has Gene Steratore ever admitted that he made a mistake? Far from it. He has always publicly claimed that he made the correct call. Has Tony Romo ever directly or indirectly stated that Gene Steratore made the correct call? No. He has eyes. No one who wasn’t at Dean Blandino’s son’s Christening honestly believes Gene Steratore made the correct call. Lots of people rationalize the call, but no one believes it was the correct call.
Here are some thought exercises to explain Tony Romo’s praise of Gene Steratore. First, Tony Romo either forgives or resents Gene Steratore. Tony Romo surely still feels the personal and professional sting of having that game and moment stolen from him. The impact of Steratore’s act on Tony Romo’s career and life was profound and yet Steratore to this day believes he did the right thing and that the call was correct. Tony Romo might be a moral and forgiving person, but it would require a saint to forgive the person who wronged you when that other person believes and publicly states that he didn’t wrong anybody in the first place. Also, what is the moral rule that says you not only have to forgive your enemy, but praise him on national fucking television?
Could it be that Tony Romo, the broadcaster, privately resents, maybe even despises, Gene Steratore? This seems more likely, at least with respect to the part of Steratore’s personality and psyche that led to the Dez Bryant call. Could it be that Tony Romo is so content with his new position and its fruits that he sees no need to create any waves, either with the network or with the league? Could it also be that Romo has a 10-year $180 million contract and sees his professional responsibility as supporting the goals and directives of the organization that (indirectly) pays his salary? Could it also be that Tony Romo the announcer is so firmly entrenched in the mindset of the organization he works for that he now sees the world in the same way the league sees the world, and therefore seamlessly supports the week-to-week “work” of that organization’s officials, as curated and articulated by Gene Steratore? And for some reason doesn’t even see the irony? I’m sorry, but when these minor rationalizations coalesce in open praise for the man and the mindset that caused you and your teammates and your fans so much pain, a line has been crossed. Tony Romo can only be regarded as a gutless, sellout loser.
Here’s the best analogy I can come up with mid-tirade. You had a dream job, a high level position that you believed was going to allow you to reach the next level of professional success. You were at the top of your game, and you had a five year runway to achieve your life’s goal. Your whole life had been leading up this moment. And then out of the blue you are called into HR because of some completely bullshit infraction – fill in whatever you want here, there are billions of choices – and the HR director, let’s call him the Bureaucrat, uses his position to derail your career at the company. It was all legit enough that the organization stood by HR, and the Bureaucrat thought he was doing his job, but anyone with any common sense or moral compass could tell it wasn’t fair. It was an obvious injustice, carried out by a person with an inflated sense of his own power and importance, and was even an overreach within the administrative standards applicable to the organization. And, to add insult to injury, since the time you were demoted, this Bureaucrat, because he was so adept at being a bureaucrat, has been promoted and handsomely rewarded.
Fast forward three years later and the Bureaucrat shows up next to you once again, working at the same company. This time he is not in a position of arbitrary power over you, but as your colleague, a lower-on-the-hierarchy colleague who is hired to advise on the very function he abused to your detriment in the past. The worst part is the Bureaucrat to this day thinks he was right and operated justly and has always publicly stood by that decision.
You have several options. You can refuse to work with him and/or have him fired. That would be perfectly reasonable and justified—and you don’t even need to justify it out of personal animus, but rather your lack of confidence in his competence to give advice on that topic. In the alternative, you can just keep your head down and do your job and not focus on the past. In this regard you would be putting the organization above yourself, which is a fine story to tell yourself, but the reality is you would be perpetuating within the organization the same character deficiencies and twisted moral logic that led to that profound injustice in the first place (one in which you were its prime victim).
I’ll tell you what you would not do. Stand up in front of the company and proclaim that the Bureaucrat is great at what he does, that he is in fact “the best.” Anybody who knows the backstory would scratch their heads—isn’t that the guy that got him fired from his last job? And all your other colleagues from your last job and your new job would respect you less. They might even go so far as to call you a gutless, sell-out loser. And they would probably be right.
So there you have it. Tony Romo is a gutless, sellout loser.
Probably.
Why the probably? I can think of two possibilities, but they are both pretty remote. The first, as I hinted at earlier, is that if Romo has actually forgiven Gene Steratore, then he might indeed be a saint. He would not only be a far better man than me, that’s easy, but a legit moral paragon—someone better than all of us. The sad part is I sure as hell don’t want anyone like that leading my football team. I have a sneaky suspicion that loving one’s enemies rarely leads to championships, especially in the NFL. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. As we know, Brady won seven, and he’s the worst.
As a long-time Romo apologist, I like to hold out hope in the second possibility, no matter how implausible. In that scenario, Romo does his job and bites his lip every week, but is really just biding his time. And then, during one random CBS game, two, five, ten, fifteen years from now, whenever he’s ready to shut it down, Romo will turn to Gene Steratore in the booth and say, “You know what, Gene? You still don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. You never did. On behalf of myself, my team, and America, Dez Caught It and Go Fuck Yourself.
“Romo out.”