9/11
Tony Romo also saved a cat stuck in a tree and helped an old lady across the streetBut a couple of miles from the house, while driving on MacArthur Boulevard, the Whites had their own mini-disaster. A tire blew on the Mercury. Bill, luckily, managed to nurse his wounded ride off the street and into the lighted parking lot of a strip mall.
For troubling news on a Sunday, it didn't rank up there with taking a direct hit to the chin from the helmet of linebacker Willie McGinest, but Bill became a bit woozy himself when he discovered his jack was malfunctioning. Never a good thing at midnight.
Plan B kicked in, however. One of those cigarette-lighter-plug-in air compressors was available. Except it was leaking more air than it was pumping.
"I don't know, a hundred cars, probably more, had to go by. Nobody was stopping," said Bill. "That's just kind of the way it is in today's world."
And then ...
"Bill was fooling with that tire, and I was standing beside the car watching him," Sharon said. "The next thing I know, a nice-looking young man, very well-dressed, but with something strange on his chin, he walked up, smiled, and said, 'Hey, you need some help?' "
Sharon hadn't even noticed a car pull up.
So now it's Bill and the well-dressed young man both bent over a flat tire at midnight on a Sunday, trying to figure out why a faulty air compressor plugged into the cigarette lighter was leaking more than pumping.
"I didn't get a good look at him at that point," Bill said. "We were both trying to get the tire pumped up."
Sharon, however, took a second look. "You are Tony Romo," she said. No reply, just a smile, and then it was back to work on the compressor.
Finally, they got the tire aired up. Enough, anyway, to make a slow drive home.
"I didn't want to bother him," Sharon said, "but I asked again, 'You're Tony Romo, right?' " I knew it was him by then. But he smiled and said, 'Yes, ma'am.' "
Sharon: "I did something no 50-year-old woman should be doing, but I screamed real loud, and then jumped up and hugged him."
Bill's immediate response was "Don't tell me how you guys did. I'm going home to watch it."
By the next day, after seeing what the "something strange on his chin" was about, that made the Whites appreciate Romo's gesture even more.
"He gets almost knocked cold in that game, and I read it took 13 stitches to close the cut, and then there's a long flight home [the Cowboys charter arrived at around 11 p.m.] and Tony's got to be dog tired, but he still was a good enough person to stop and help us," Bill said.
Does Philly miss TO? While everyone's having a conniption about how competent, how confident, how cocky that little rookie wide receiver is, think about this:
It didn't have to be this way. It didn't have to come down to falling in love with a 21-year-old out of California who has blistering speed and a monster ego, two valued commodities among football fans in this town. There's a lot to love about DeSean Jackson - the 40-yard dash time, the hands, the bravado, the instincts - but the Eagles shouldn't have to rely on a rookie to be their playmaker at wide receiver.
They had one. For a brief moment, they had it all. It could have worked. It should have worked. Had there been better communication from all involved, the Eagles might have a Lombardi Trophy by now. But as we all know, the Eagles' relationship with Terrell Owens ended in the nastiest of divorces, all because the parties involved - including Andy Reid, Owens, Donovan McNabb, and, yes, even the loquacious Hugh Douglas - failed to talk, air their grievances like men, and, ultimately, put in the work to save the marriage.
Shame on them all.
Well, if you're McNabb, you can hope and pray that Jackson is the next great receiver. They don't come around often, and certainly not at 5-foot-10. McNabb is closer to the end of his career than the beginning, and Jackson might be his last chance.
If you're Reid, you hope that in the next 15 years, another Owens will come around and you'll have a chance to get him. It's unlikely, though. Look at the NFL now. There's the old guard of Randy Moss, Marvin Harrison, Owens, Torry Holt and Chad Ocho Cinco (or whatever his name is now), and the new guard, players who are still developing such as Braylon Edwards, Andre Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin.
Cowboy$ #1The New York Giants and New York Jets had the biggest increase in value in Forbes Magazine's annual ranking of NFL franchises, each jumping 21 percent because of their new stadium.
And the stadium where they'll both play isn't scheduled to open until the 2010 season.
The Giants moved from eighth to fourth in the rankings released Wednesday, valued at $1.178 billion, behind Dallas ($1.612 billion), Washington ($1.538 billion) and New England ($1.324 billion), the perennial leaders. The Jets are right behind them in fifth with a value of $1.178 billion.
Indianapolis made the biggest jump in the rankings, going from 21st to eighth because their new stadium is opening this year. The Colts are valued at $1.076 billion.
The magazine also found that for the first time in any sport, team values averaged $1 billion. Ten years ago, when it first started keeping track, the average value of an NFL team was $288 million.
Forbes attributes the increase primarily to new stadiums as well as increased sponsorship deals.
In all, 19 teams were valued at more than $1 billion.
Dr Z must not think very much of Tom Brady
