Former NFL quarterback Tony Romo was just a guy trying to make the roster during his rookie season — by whatever means necessary.
When Romo, 45, was trying to break into the league with the Dallas Cowboys in the mid-2000s, legendary head coach Bill Parcells, who is Italian, was at the helm of the franchise, and Tony Sparano, who is also Italian, was the team’s offensive line coach.
“Parcells was like, ‘Tony, you gotta get your paisan. He’s terrible. All of these things,” Romo recalled Tuesday, January 27 on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show. “And I was like, I don’t think he knows I’m not Italian.”
The revelation stunned McAfee, 38, who exclaimed, “Tony Romo is not Italian?! Hold on. Hold on. I am flustered here. I’ve been calling you a paisan every time I talk about you. I’m 100 percent so sorry.”
“I actually let Parcells do it, too, I wanted to make the team,” Romo responded. “I was like, ‘Hey, let’s go with it.’”
The jig was up, however, when Sparano spilled the beans to Parcells.
“You know he’s not Italian, right?” Romo remembered Sparano saying. “I was like, ‘Shhh, what are you doing? We’re all on the same team here, I thought. I can pretend.’”
After three years on the Cowboys roster, during which he mostly was used as a holder for placekicks, Romo began the 2006 season as the backup to Dallas starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe.
Romo eventually replaced Bledsoe as the starter six games into the season and never looked back, starting for Dallas until he announced his retirement in 2017.
These days, Romo is a fixture in the CBS Sports broadcast booth next to play-by-play legend Jim Nantz.
It’s been a bit of a rough go for Romo this season, with some fans criticizing his on-air performance, which he addressed with McAfee on Tuesday.
“I think it goes with the territory,” Romo said. “People are like, ‘What about the criticism?’ It’s like, you’re doing you. You’ve got to be yourself and you’re trying your best. It’s not like you’re ever not trying your hardest to go be great at something … The noise is the noise. It’s part of being in this job. To me it’s like, it’s up, it’s down. But at the end of the day, you don’t really listen to things.”
Romo said all of the social media chatter about his broadcasting performance doesn’t prevent football fans from tuning in.
“They’re watching you, so there must be something there,” he argued. “But we’re also commenting on their teams that are winning and losing. It’s like, I don’t fully like someone when he’s not rooting for my team. So there’s a balancing try. I root for both teams. I root for guys who love the sport, who care so deeply and want to win. I want them to care as much as I did. Those are the guys you kind of root for a little bit. Sometimes it comes across a certain way, but I love it. It’s a great job.”
