Second Thoughts

Pain's a part of the game for NFL QB

Despite missing only two games in the past four seasons, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo knows how tenuous a career in the NFL can be.
Despite missing only two games in the past four seasons, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo knows how tenuous a career in the NFL can be.

Tony Romo was back in a hospital Tuesday, but it was only for a visit.

The quarterback joined teammates at Texas Scottish Rite -- a pediatric center in the heart of Dallas -- where he posed for photos and signed autographs for a number of children who were confined to wheelchairs.

"I think more than anything you appreciate your health and how lucky you are and how not everybody has that," Romo told The Dallas Morning News.

It was an interesting comment from a 34-year-old quarterback who has dealt with his share of injuries during his nine-year run as an NFL starter. Already this season Rome has dealt with torn rib cartilage and a pair of transverse process fractures in his back , which was surgically-repaired twice in 2013 to fix a herniated disk and remove a cyst.

Still, Romo has missed only two games in the past four seasons even though he has suffered a fractured rib and a punctured lung among other injuries. That has earned him recognition as one of the game's tough guys.

Some may question why Romo continues to play through the pain considering his financial future has been secured with a $108 million contract extension he signed in 2013, but Romo has a simple explanation.

"Football for me, it's my life's work," he told the newspaper. "That's my career. I'll be a husband, I'll be dad, and I'll have been a football player at the time when I finish on this earth.

"In some ways, I want to give everything I can into being the best version of that I can be. There's only 16 games a year, 16 days, that you're guaranteed, and you're really not even guaranteed that. ... You just want to make sure you give everything you can. It's a great, rewarding experience if you're able to do that at a level that you feel proud of."

A Philadelphia story

New York Knicks President Phil Jackson said the team's poor start can be blamed on "loser's mentality" more than a lack of skill or talent.

Wrote Reggie Hayes of The News-Sentinel of Fort Wayne, Ind.: "It's possible, however, that they've simply contracted a bad case of 76eritis."

Making news

The Cleveland Browns will start Johnny Manziel at quarterback Sunday over Brian Hoyer against Cincinnati.

"Makes some sense," wrote Janice Hough of leftcoastsportsbabe.com. "If Cleveland can't make the playoffs, they'll be at least more likely to make ESPN headlines."

Riding high

The New Jersey Institute of Technology Highlanders catapulted out of college basketball obscurity with a stunning victory over Michigan on Saturday.

Now the campus bookstore is struggling to cope with the school's fresh fame. The bookstore's manager, Pete Maranzano, told The New York Times he had six pages worth of T-shirt orders to fill Monday compared to the usual Monday load of two to three shirts.

Most of the orders are coming from addresses in Big Ten country, Maranzano said, from Michigan to Indiana to Ohio.

The Highlanders have only one more traditional power left on their schedule: Villanova on Dec. 23.

The bookstore had better restock the shelves, just in case.

Sports quiz

Tony Romo made his first NFL start against this team during the 2006 season.

Sports answer

The Carolina Panthers, a 35-14 Cowboys' victory.

TIM COOPER

Sports on 12/10/2014

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