Angus
Active Member
- Messages
- 5,097
- Reaction score
- 20
D.C. Sports Bog, By Dan Steinberg
A RuinRomo Tale
Reason 463F why the Internets rule: One day in December the wife of a Packers fan from San Diego-via-Milwaukee can come up with this idea for jinxing a Dallas quarterback during his upcoming road games in Carolina and Washington by creating a PDF of the QB's girlfriend's noggin for head-on-stick purposes, and the husband and his buddy can turn it into a Web site, and within 10 hours of the launch I can read about it on a host of blogs--like Mister Irrelevant, for example, from whom I first learned of RuinRomo.com one week ago today--and within seven days the Web site can be featured on Good Morning America, Pardon the Interruption, SportsCenter and the NFL Network, while the site's creator--a 32-year-old real estate agent who is actually only two degrees removed from knowing Tony Romo--will have received more than 500 e-mails from virtually every state in the nation, plus a random call from a football follower in Hawaii who wanted to talk about jinxes.
Reason 463G why the Internets rule: long sentences.
Anyhow, unless you're dead, or employed by Sen. Ted Stevens, you've already looked at RuinRomo.com, the ever-expanding brainchild of Matt Sorensen and his wife, a radio personality in Southern California who came up with the Jessica Simpson head-on-stick idea while reading the gossip for her "Daily Dirt" segment. This was right after Romo choked in front of Jessica in that loss to the Eagles, so Matt's wife--who is still going nameless out of respect for her employer--called him and told him about her idea.
"I was like, 'Babe, that's brilliant,' " recalled Sorensen, who, as a Packers fan, was still hopeful of Green Bay attaining home-field advantage through the NFC playoffs. So with some help from a web-designing friend, they launched RuinRomo, e-mailing about the link to about 100 friends and 10 radio stations to try to get things started. Within about two days, Boomer Esiason was talking about the heads on his radio show, noted blogophobe Michael Wilbon was pumping up the site on ESPN, Sorensen's parents were bragging to their friends--"I was kind of surprised; we started a site called RuinRomo and my parents are proud of me," he said--Perez Hilton was calling the idea "brazilliant" and Tony Romo was being asked about the stunt on the NFL Network.
"I mean, freakin Bryant Gumbel interviewed him about it," Sorensen told me. "I was kind of nervous. It's nothing against Tony Romo, I think he's a super-cool guy, but he's the quarterback and it's what we've got to do to take him down. I guess it's gone out of control. I can't even keep up."
There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of Jessica heads-on-sticks last week in Carolina, but Carolina had nothing to play for and what's Panthers-Cowboys mean, anyhow? But Commanders-Cowboys? In the last week of the season? With an entire season--plus lots of reporter frequent flier miles--on the line? If this jinx doesn't work on Sunday, it'll never work. Landover, the RunoRomoites are hoping, will be blonder than Christmas at the Nylanders. New today are the Carrie Underwood PDF's, for even more blond-GF-head-on-stick jinxability.
But the reason I called RuinRomo HQ, of course, is because there are these nasty rumblings that maybe Romo will play just a half, or a quarter, or not at all on Sunday. How, I wondered, can Commanders fans curse the Cowboys by holding cut-outs of a lady whose boyfriend is holding a clipboard? Don't people need some Brad Johnson-related chicanery?
"Wow," Sorensen said, suggesting head-on-stick-holding Commanders fans could interpret any Romo benching as fear-of-the-heads. "I don't know what they do. It's really up to the fans to make it happen."
See, since the site launched, Sorensen and his cohorts have decided that it should expand beyond merely ruining Romo. This site, they hope, can be a gathering point for fans of all teams in all sports to plot out their witty in-game demonstrations. "Jinx the Jock," they're thinking. Plus, his wife will write a sports gossip column, and there will be blogs, and they'll put up sports feel-good stories, so those Dallas fans will stop saying all those mean things about them.
"I'm such a novice at this; it's just fun for right now," Sorensen said. "If it's keep going, awesome. If it doesn't, on to the next thing."
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2007/12/a_ruinromo_qa.html
A RuinRomo Tale
Reason 463F why the Internets rule: One day in December the wife of a Packers fan from San Diego-via-Milwaukee can come up with this idea for jinxing a Dallas quarterback during his upcoming road games in Carolina and Washington by creating a PDF of the QB's girlfriend's noggin for head-on-stick purposes, and the husband and his buddy can turn it into a Web site, and within 10 hours of the launch I can read about it on a host of blogs--like Mister Irrelevant, for example, from whom I first learned of RuinRomo.com one week ago today--and within seven days the Web site can be featured on Good Morning America, Pardon the Interruption, SportsCenter and the NFL Network, while the site's creator--a 32-year-old real estate agent who is actually only two degrees removed from knowing Tony Romo--will have received more than 500 e-mails from virtually every state in the nation, plus a random call from a football follower in Hawaii who wanted to talk about jinxes.
Reason 463G why the Internets rule: long sentences.
Anyhow, unless you're dead, or employed by Sen. Ted Stevens, you've already looked at RuinRomo.com, the ever-expanding brainchild of Matt Sorensen and his wife, a radio personality in Southern California who came up with the Jessica Simpson head-on-stick idea while reading the gossip for her "Daily Dirt" segment. This was right after Romo choked in front of Jessica in that loss to the Eagles, so Matt's wife--who is still going nameless out of respect for her employer--called him and told him about her idea.
"I was like, 'Babe, that's brilliant,' " recalled Sorensen, who, as a Packers fan, was still hopeful of Green Bay attaining home-field advantage through the NFC playoffs. So with some help from a web-designing friend, they launched RuinRomo, e-mailing about the link to about 100 friends and 10 radio stations to try to get things started. Within about two days, Boomer Esiason was talking about the heads on his radio show, noted blogophobe Michael Wilbon was pumping up the site on ESPN, Sorensen's parents were bragging to their friends--"I was kind of surprised; we started a site called RuinRomo and my parents are proud of me," he said--Perez Hilton was calling the idea "brazilliant" and Tony Romo was being asked about the stunt on the NFL Network.
"I mean, freakin Bryant Gumbel interviewed him about it," Sorensen told me. "I was kind of nervous. It's nothing against Tony Romo, I think he's a super-cool guy, but he's the quarterback and it's what we've got to do to take him down. I guess it's gone out of control. I can't even keep up."
There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of Jessica heads-on-sticks last week in Carolina, but Carolina had nothing to play for and what's Panthers-Cowboys mean, anyhow? But Commanders-Cowboys? In the last week of the season? With an entire season--plus lots of reporter frequent flier miles--on the line? If this jinx doesn't work on Sunday, it'll never work. Landover, the RunoRomoites are hoping, will be blonder than Christmas at the Nylanders. New today are the Carrie Underwood PDF's, for even more blond-GF-head-on-stick jinxability.
But the reason I called RuinRomo HQ, of course, is because there are these nasty rumblings that maybe Romo will play just a half, or a quarter, or not at all on Sunday. How, I wondered, can Commanders fans curse the Cowboys by holding cut-outs of a lady whose boyfriend is holding a clipboard? Don't people need some Brad Johnson-related chicanery?
"Wow," Sorensen said, suggesting head-on-stick-holding Commanders fans could interpret any Romo benching as fear-of-the-heads. "I don't know what they do. It's really up to the fans to make it happen."
See, since the site launched, Sorensen and his cohorts have decided that it should expand beyond merely ruining Romo. This site, they hope, can be a gathering point for fans of all teams in all sports to plot out their witty in-game demonstrations. "Jinx the Jock," they're thinking. Plus, his wife will write a sports gossip column, and there will be blogs, and they'll put up sports feel-good stories, so those Dallas fans will stop saying all those mean things about them.
"I'm such a novice at this; it's just fun for right now," Sorensen said. "If it's keep going, awesome. If it doesn't, on to the next thing."
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2007/12/a_ruinromo_qa.html
