Dallas Cowboys: The Perfect Storm

After a decade out of the spotlight, sports media has refocused its spotlight on the team it loves to cover: the Dallas Cowboys.

Even as they began a slow decline into mediocrity this season, they still get more air time, ink, and pixels devoted to them then the entire AFC North combined.

Why is that? It is because they're so scary good that they demand air time, like the Patriots of last season?

No, because they are 4-2. Because Tony Romo has never won a playoff game. Because as close as T.O. gets to the all-time receiving touchdown record, he will never be thought of in the same breath as Jerry Rice, except when someone says, "T.O. is nothing like Jerry Rice."

No, Dallas is the perfect storm of every shortcut the media uses to drum up headlines, and the two biggest stories in the entire league now both happen to wear the blue and silver.

Add that to the unabashed love that people like Joe Buck and John Madden feel for tony Romo, and you've got the perfect storm.

Tony Romo's pinkie was all they talked about on the Monday Night Football pre-game, halftime, and postgame.

Pacman Jones has been given automatic top billing on any collection of sports headlines.

When Dallas gets Roy Williams just before the trade deadline, all people talk about is how he will co-exist with T.O.

Let's examine this person by person.

We all know sports networks (especially ESPN) are obsessed with controversy. No player has been at the center of more controversy (with the possible exception of Michael Vick) than Pacman Jones.

He gives the media a perfect topic to fill space with. You can debate how many chances he should get. You can argue about whether or not his chaotic upbringing is to blame for his actions. And of course, every article about Pacman will have the list of headlines on the right side of the page, chronicling every time he has had a brush with the law.

Then you have T.O. Ever since he implied that Jeff Garcia was gay, he has been able to get a headline anytime he speaks. I was in grad school and working as a bar tender on the Wednesday morning when Owens had his painkiller incident, and you would've thought that the Twin Towers had been hit again.

Even CNN jumped on it, and when you have so much coverage on a 24-hour news cycle, you have to fill it with different analysts. Different analysts have different opinions, and when one comes out that is the right combination of slightly plausible and sensational, that becomes fact until it is proven otherwise.

Then you have Tony Romo. Ever since Drew Bledsoe was knocked out by the Giants in 2006, Tony Romo has epitomized the hype machine.

As soon as he started playing, people were so ready to paint him as the next Brett Favre, even though he has been the luckiest quarterback in history.

How else to explain when the ball was hiked over his head against the Bears last season on 3rd-and-20-something, and he ran back, and was able to run for the first down.

He's not lucky? He's just that good? Really? Then why did he go undrafted? Why did he hold the clipboard for people like Bledsoe, Vinny Testaverde, and Quincy Carter?

Now he always gets pegged as the successor to Brady and Manning, even though he has been known to cost his team games by himself occasionally, and he has yet to win anything that could be considered a big game.

I'm not here to blame anyone (cough ESPN cough), but I am trying to explain to fans of the other 31 NFL teams that might not know why they are swept aside to discuss Tony Romo stretching in practice (seriously, it was up yesterday).