In case you somehow missed it, everyone now says that Tony Romo is ahead of schedule in his rehab from back surgery. To be fair, most reporters tried to make it clear that they were just quoting Dallas Cowboys’ owner/president/general manager/chief-meddler Jerry Jones from an interview he gave to ESPN’s Calvin Watkins. If you want to get caught up on this, you can read all about it here, here, here, or here.
It kills me that nobody called bullshit on Jones. Nobody even tried to dig a little deeper on this story.
Let me give you a similar scenario and see how you’d handle it. What if Obama today stated, “America is better now than it was before.” How would that go over? Any halfway reasonable person (from any political party) would immediately come up with two simple follow up questions. The first question would obviously be, “what exactly do you mean by ‘better’”? The second one would be something along the lines of, “what evidence are you using to reach your conclusion?” Even the most dedicated Democrat would probably expect Obama to follow up a little there and back up his thinking.
Jerry Jones received no such reaction. Everyone pretty much just ran with his quote. Nobody ever thought to follow up with some good questions. Why can’t someone step up and ask, “what exactly makes you confident that Tony Romo is ahead of schedule like you claim?” Since Romo’s late-December surgery, the Cowboys have not released any timetable for Romo’s rehab. There has been no mention of specific milestones that Romo has reached. Jerry Jones himself even said in that same interview that Romo had not thrown to receivers yet. The first organized team football activities don’t take place for almost another month. So what we have here is a situation where there is no set timetable (at least publicly mentioned), no milestone details, and no real future plans for another month or so. Given all that, I find it maddening that Jerry Jones simply expects us to take his word on the matter.
The truth is, Romo might well be ahead of schedule. Romo himself said earlier this month that he hadn’t had any setbacks. That seems promising, or at least not the opposite of promising. Also, I understand why the team or Romo might want some privacy in this process. I’m not saying that they have any obligation to tell us anything or everything.
But, unless we have more information, we can’t really take Jones’ words at face value. Unless he can provide any actual, specific details, this is just a case of sheer noise. Our first dose of reliable information might not come until April 21st when the Cowboys start their team activities. Until then, don’t listen to Jerry Jones. In fact, don’t listen to him after that either. Although, to be fair, you’d miss out on some great lines if you stopped listening. Remember when he said that Felix Jones had, “one of those nice bubble butts?” Swear to Jebus, I’m not making that up. Oh, and he has others, like when he said that Troy Aikman, “looks good in the shower.” Enjoy that.
