Romo Receives Contract Extension; Favre Allowed to Retire

Romo Receives Contract Extension; Favre Finally Allowed to Retire

(AP) Dallas – In an impromptu press conference following the Cowboys’ 35-7 win over St. Louis today, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that Dallas QB Tony Romo had signed a multi-million dollar contract extension, getting $44.8 million to be the NFL’s “scrappy white-guy quarterback” for the next four years.

“We couldn’t have found a better guy to succeed the legendarily scrappy Brett Favre,” Goodell said, with the Cowboys’ All-American single star logo behind him. “Tony is a fine successor to Brett’s scrappy legacy, and we will be honored to have him as the league’s poster boy white, protestant gun-slinger in to the next decade.”

Goddell cited Romo’s humble upbringings, small college grooming, scrambling ability and extreme white-ness as further support for the league’s decision to pin its marketing efforts for the next five years on his shoulders.

Romo took over for struggling Cowboys QB Drew Bledsoe midway through the 2006 season after barely making the Dallas roster during training camp. Romo’s entrance was part of a pregame plan to send in the scrappy backup if Bledsoe encountered trouble, but legend has it that Cowboys coach Bill Parcells peered down the bench, and, unable to recall Romo’s name, pointed at the newcomer, saying “Hey, you. Go do something special.”

While full details of the contract extension have not been made available, Goodell did make clear that, after years of debating the move, Packers QB Brett Favre would finally be allowed to retire.

“Brett Favre has been scrappy for over 250 consecutive games, and has really set the standard by which all future gunslingers will be defined” Goodell said. He then added, “Brett is also exceptionally white.”

Favre, who was hunting grouse with his bare hands, was unavailable for comment.

The new marketing plan was not met without criticism, however, as some questioned whether Romo was indeed a worthy successor to Favre’s scrappy mantle.

“This is ludicrous, Brett has already shown this year that he has plenty of gunslinging left in him” said Favre’s representative, Mississippi lawyer Jimbo Hutchins. “Tony Romo is a fine quarterback, but he doesn’t have nearly the down-home accent, or force nearly enough dangerous passes in to traffic to be taking Brett’s place. He probably doesn’t even fish.”

Both Favre and Romo have, by virtue of their inimitable John Wayne-cowboy like personalities, led their teams to undefeated 4-0 records in 2007. Hutchins suggested displacing the Super Bowl with one “Scrappy Bowl”, which would pit Romo and Favre in a decathlon of sorts, combining their talents at running the two-minute drill and growing facial hair in to one made-for-TV event. Goodell would not comment on the plan.

Although the plan has his critics, there are plenty of NFL fans eager for Romo to take the helm from Favre. Various Cowboy fans gathered at the event expressed pride at Romo’s decision to date pretty, but not too pretty country star Carrie Underwood. Underwood is seen by most NFL fans as an attractive, but in no way threatening or sexual romantic option, like one that might befit more successful but less scrappy quarterbacks such as New England’s Tom Brady.

Hitchins also pointed to the ill-fated move to replace Lawrence Taylor with Ray Lewis as the league’s “Killer Linebacker” as evidence that occasionally, these plans backfire. Critics of the linebacker plan often that debacle, when the league sought to replace LT, who always appeared on the verge of killing his opponents, with Lewis, who actually went on to murder someone.

According to Goodell, several quarterbacks have been considered for the post in the previous five years since Favre began to visibly age. According to Goodell, the NFL at one point considered Jeff Garcia, Jake Delhomme and Ben Roethlisberger were considered for the scrappy title. Goodell also mentioned that Jay Cutler had been given strong consideration because of his gentle Southern drawl and propensity for throwing back breaking interceptions.

“Ultimately, the decision was very easy,” said Goodell. “We found plenty of quarterbacks that were either scrappy or gunslingers, but until Tony, we hadn’t found one who combined those two adjectives so successfully.”

ESPN’s Chris Berman expressed special excitement at Romo’s promotion because of the natural conduciveness of Romo’s surname to creating mind-numbing nicknames for use on the long-running NFL Live.

“It’s absolutely poifect,” Berman said in his oft-deployed Yosemite Sam impersonation. “There’s ‘Tony When in Romo’, ‘Tony Romo Wasn’t Built in a Day’…I might even crazy now and then and bust out ‘Tony Romo Is Burning’!”

Goodell said that everyone in the league was very grateful this long process was over, so that the league could move on to finding a Latino or Asian head coach that could soon become the first to represent his race in the Super Bowl.

“This has been a taxing but rewarding process,” Goodell said beleaguredly. “Ultimately, we’re all just happy Brett can finally retire in peace.”

Saints Victory over Falcons & Katrina is Made-for-TV Disaster

September 26 - Leave it to ESPN and the marketing guys at the NFL to turn something that, left alone, might be breathtaking, to an event so over-hyped, over-pimped and bloated with self-congratulatory back slapping that it defeated the very triumph it had been produced to praise: this evening, which was so wonderful because it gave the citizens of New Orleans a distraction from their devastation, just couldn't stop distracting them from football.

Maybe its my own fault. I tuned in expecting to see a football game. Sure, I thought, there will be some coverage of Katrina. There will be a few survivor interviews, a few sentiments expressed, a continued plea for financial help. There will probably be a wonderful halftime tribute. This will all be good. Then I heard U2 was going to play.

Uh oh. (When did U2 become officially contractually obligated to play all the "celebrate recovering from disaster" sporting events? They did the 9-11 Super Bowl, and they did this. When something horrible happens, do they just sigh, and mark on their calendar a concert in that location a year or so after the tragedy?)

There was U2.

And then there was Green Day. And Tom Benson, the Saints owner, dancing with the cheerleaders and a Saints umbrella. And I thought: this is all good. I bet this makes a lot of people in New Orleans really happy. And I meant it.

But it kept coming. And coming. Chris Berman lecturing on the racial makeup of America. Tirico and Theisman, at every juncture, reminding us that this was "more than just a football game." Cutaways to Suzy Kolber on the sidelines, always ready with a story and statistic about the devastation. Every announcer, every analyst, repeating the refrain that this kind of distraction was exactly what New Orleans needed.

You don't need to be a literature major to recognize the blatant, painful irony in this broadcast. New Orleans did need a football game. A hard-hitting, exciting, elegant, intense football game. They got a made-for-TV healing pageant that exploited their pain for ratings. And it was ugly.

Don't get me wrong; the Saints return to the Superdome was a story, and a good one, especially considering the countless refugees housed in the building during Katrina's wrath. ESPN had a duty to cover that social aspect of the football game, and its impact on the communities involved. But, their coverage of the evening repeatedly revealed a perilous internal contradiction in their production. If what New Orleans needs is football, then in God's name, let them have football.

If you had just had your heartbroken by a beautiful woman or man who revealed themselves to be a hideous snake, you might feel good if they wanted to take you out for a night on the town as a distraction. You'd be confused when they started telling you every 2 minutes "I'm so glad we can take you out for this distraction so we can take your mind off all the horrible pain and suffering you went through at the hands of ________ (insert hideous snake's name here.)"

ESPN has now held broadcasts of Monday Night Football for three weeks, since acquiring air rights from their parent company, ABC. And one must wonder, just three weeks in: is this soap opera approach to broadcasting the long term future of American sports' most enduring regular sports event?

ABC didn't have this problem with Monday Night Football. It had three hours of football programming a week: the Monday Night game. It didn't have three channels of 24 hour programming that required around-the-clock angles, human interest stories, personal dramas, and a soap opera approach to the sport that is now, unequivocally, America's game. Sure, ABC used its angles. But the producers of that show knew their job: to report a story that included the outside world, but saw it with football as its centerpiece.

Now, as I finish this column, its 2:13 AM, and ESPN's Tony Kornheiser is still raging on about the hurricane, the devastation and the healing, the heartbreak and the hand-holding, the death and the recovery. And somewhere, a citizen of New Orleans is fading to sleep, just wishing he'd start talking about football.