Dallas QB's work ethic will help him overcome bobble

	Tony Romo's bobbled snap may have cost the Cowboys their wild-card game against the Seahawks last Saturday. Kirby Lee/WireImage
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That stuff Tony Romo was saying Saturday night about how it's going to take him a long time to get over The Bobble? He's right. It's going to take him a long time. Not just because it was a colossal, historic mistake on a huge stage, and not just because of the inescapable irony involved when a star rises so swiftly and falls so tragically. Although, come to think of it, those are plenty good reasons.

Romo will suffer mightily because he's Romo. I won't claim to know Romo well. I know him like a writer knows a subject with whom he's spent some quality time. Back in November, as Romo-mania was approaching its peak (when American cared whether Rome was dating Jessica Simpson or Carrie Underwood), I spent a few days in Dallas reporting a Romo story for Sports Illustrated. We had a meal together, talked a couple of times on the phone, chatted after two games. It was enough to give me something less than a portrait, but more than a snapshot.

Romo will hurt because he cares. On a midweek evening in north Dallas, we sat across a wooden table in a nondescript mall cafeteria restaurant. Romo detailed his climb from high school to NFL starter. This part was not unusual, but what was unusual was the passion with which Romo told the story.

This is a guy who dragged college roommates out into the parking lots at Eastern Illinois and made them catch passes under the streetlights. This is a guy who, in his first three years with the Cowboys, would go back to the practice bubble and throw into the netting beyond the goalposts. Why? Because he wanted to throw a perfect spiral. Every time. He said it took him until the middle of his third year with the Cowboys before he felt like he could pick up a football, grip and throw a spiral without thinking about it. "You can be 10 times more effective if you can just throw a spiral in all conditions,'' Romo said.

Here's the point: Romo wanted this. He wanted to excel at playing quarterback. He is a perfectionist who lives by his own high standards and flogs himself when he falls short.

When he finally got a chance in a midseason game against the Giants, he wasn't nervous. He was excited. When he threw three picks in the game, he moped around for a week because he was embarrassed. "He always figured when he finally got his chance, he'd just kill it,'' his roommate and old college bud, Tom Brewer, told me. "And then he didn't kill it.''

Romo did kill it for the month that followed. He, got the Cowboys into the playoffs and then stumbled down the stretch when teams started looking at tape of him. He was OK against Seattle. Threw for a buck-eighty-nine with a touchdown and no picks. But then came the bobble and the tears and now he can count on being asked about that play in 2052, when somebody else bobbles a snap in a playoff game before Super Bowl I-don't-know-the-Roman-Numerals for that number.