SportSnorts Blog: On The Measure And the Making Of A Man

When asked if his team was outplayed by the Buffalo Bills on Monday night, Tony Romo answered, "I don't think our team was outplayed by the Bills, but I sure was." He went on to credit his teammates for picking him up on an off night. He made no excuses for his bad play, nor did he attempt to sugar coat it or play it down.

Any athlete - or person, for that matter - can flourish in prosperity. It is easy to comport oneself properly when one's endeavors are successful. It is in the tough times, the times when everything you do is wrong, when every effort results in apparent failure that a real man is measured.

Tony Romo threw four interceptions in the first half. Of the Bills' 24 points, he was directly responsible for fourteen of them, throwing two picks that were returned for touchdowns. He also was responsible for taking points off the board for the Cowboys by throwing an interception in the end zone, as they were attempting to go in for the score.

But an absolutely horrendous night was salvaged because the kid refused to quit fighting. He hung his head for a bit, but he didn't implode or self-destruct. Nor did he try to pass the buck. He just got up and went back to work.

Romo was not the first Cowboys' quarterback to throw five picks in a game. Troy Aikman did it. So did Danny White, Steve Pelleur, and Eddie LeBaron. Romo is the first Cowboys' quarterback, however, to throw that many interceptions in a game and still win it.

He credited his teammates for picking him up: "I put the team in a hole early in the game, and our team dug me out," he said. Tight end Jason Witten, however, made a brilliant observation when he said, "If there was any doubt (about Tony), they need to believe now. I was trying to stay in his ear and support him, but he doesn't need it." That is high praise from a teammate on a night when you have done everything in your power to lose a game your team should have won handily.

Watching Romo struggle in that game and then pick himself up and guide his team to an unlikely victory, I couldn't help but think of the marvelous poem by Rudyard Kipling:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming
it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make
allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by
waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't
give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think
- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the
truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch
the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with
worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And
risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your
beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force
your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says
to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,'
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor
loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of
distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -
which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! That, my friend, is the measure of a
man.