Impressive rise, but Romo has to shed playoff albatross

Turned on the TV the other day, and there was Tony Romo, playing golf.

On another station, there was Romo, warbling Take Me Out to the Ballgame at Wrigley Field.

Another station, more Romo, this time walking out of a restaurant with his girlfriend, Jessica Simpson.

And on yet another channel, there was the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, this time being interviewed about all the things he does when he’s not playing football.

It’s a good thing, Romo said, that he’s always "made a lot of good choices."

Oh, really? The public jury, let me suggest, is still out on that.

Look, I like the guy. Romo’s friendliness has been disarming.

And though his happy-feet style is not my favorite kind of NFL quarterbacking, I get it, I get it. And sometimes it even works. When he quarterbacks the Cowboys, something always seems to happen.

Especially in the playoffs.

Ah, the playoffs. Superman had his kryptonite. Tony Romo has the playoffs.

Did you know that during the three years that he started for Eastern Illinois, his team made it to the NCAA Division I-AA playoffs three times?

It did, and on each of the three occasions, Eastern Illinois lost ... in the first round.

Add the two first-round playoff defeats that he’s had as Cowboys quarterback, and we sense either a horrible trend or some cosmic coincidence.

The man has never won a playoff game in his life.

Am I the only one that seems concerned about that?

Granted, Romo threw for 4,211 yards and 36 touchdowns last season, both franchise records in a record book where Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman, Danny White and Don Meredith are mentioned prominently.

Romo did this despite not being selected by anyone in the 2003 draft. And he did it even after sitting on the bench, on the borderline of being cut, for his first three NFL seasons.

From irrelevance, in other words, to being Jessica Simpson’s main squeeze. Only in America.

And somewhere along the way, betwixt former assistant Sean Payton’s biased endorsement (he, too, went to Eastern Illinois) and Drew Bledsoe’s failure to grasp the job by the horns, Romo was thrust onstage, moonwalked a few steps, found Terrell Owens and Jason Witten with the football a few times, and suddenly there was owner Jerry Jones, like Morpheus in The Matrix, blowing in Romo’s ear and telling him he was The One.

It’s been a spellbinding script — except for those playoff chapters.

Again, am I the only one that seems concerned about that?

Since Aikman’s career ended, Cowboys quarterbacks have included Randall Cunningham, Anthony Wright, Quincy Carter, Clint Stoerner, Ryan Leaf, Chad Hutchinson, Vinny Testaverde, Drew Henson and Bledsoe.

With then-coach Bill Parcells on an unannounced timetable, was Romo simply the right arm at the right time? Or do all the quarterbacks get prettier at closing time?

Jones, after pledging patience, seemed to end the debate last October by handing Romo a six-year, $67.5 million contract with an $11.5 million signing bonus.

Was "mix in a playoff win every now and then" even in the fine print? Just wondering.

No, I’m not anti-Romo, the football player. I’m a convert.

But I do shift uneasily whenever I see Romo staring back at me from the pages of the National Enquirer. And lately he’s always seems to be wearing shades and Jessica’s arm, not his football pads.

Nothing against the lovely Jessica. It really doesn’t matter if she doesn’t know the difference between chicken and tuna.

But how many of you see Jessica Simpson and think about the Kim Basinger character in The Natural?

Note to Tony: Ask her if she shot The Whammer.

Maybe he is The One, of course. Maybe he’s just a kid, at age 28, enjoying his first trip through the candy store. Maybe all those rifled passes and eluded tackles will translate into a Super Bowl one postseason.

In football, more than we sometimes care to admit, perception is reality. Reggie Bush, for now, is Exhibit A. Is Romo Exhibit B?

In 2003, Romo traveled the short distance from the EIU campus in Charleston, Ill., to the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. He worked out in front of all 32 teams. None drafted him. And then, though the Cowboys were embarrassingly desperate for a quarterback, Romo sat on the bench for three years, virtually uncalled upon.

As he goes into his third season as the Cowboys’ starter, Romo’s story still reads like a Hollywood blockbuster.

Is he The Natural, or is he that Peter Sellers character in the movie Being There? In the movie, Sellers plays a slow, sheltered gardener whose simple words about tending garden are mistaken for profound political thoughts.

His influence grows, though he innocently does and says nothing.

By the movie’s end, the gardener’s image has grown so much that we see him in the final scene, walking on water.

Perception is reality.

I think it’s time — to soothe Cowboys fans’ souls, if nothing else — for Tony Romo to win a playoff game.