Let me just start by saying the Cowboys lost because the Giants played better – and Tony Romo threw a really ill-timed interception. That’s it. Occam’s Razor and all that, but no doubt the superstitious Cowboy fans will blame it all on Jessica Simpson. Yahoo, Google, and Nielsen pretty much all confirm that.
If you haven’t been paying attention to professional football or celebrity dating gossip, good for you and let me fill you in. Singer Jessica Simpson is canoodling with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. The Cowboys lost Sunday to the New York Giants and a cub-quarterback, the brother of the great Peyton Manning, and the reason University of Kentucky football I-can-throw-the-ball-a-hundred-yards-sitting-down quarterback Jared Lorenzen isn’t starting.
But I’ve digressed already.
Cowboys fans say Romo was off his game because of sideline hottie Jessica. And for many, that’s a legitimate concern. (Not for me. When I played sports, the presence of a smokin’ hot girlfriend made me play better. Choose whichever your superstition you prefer.)
On Monday morning, I noticed on Google’s Hot Trends list, which I check every morning to see what’s going on in search land, that there was a spike in searches for “Yoko Romo,” a reference to Simpson that also refers to the lady that supposedly destroyed the Beatles.
You know, if you really believe that.
Something similar happened on Yahoo’s search engine. Yahoo’s Buzz Log reports that searches for “Jessica Simpson curse” and “Tony Romo cursed” spiked after the game, as did searches for Simpson look-alike Lynsey Nordstrom, who was supposedly planted by the Giants to mess with Romo’s head.
Nielsen//NetRatings won’t be left out of the madness. They report that blog posts about the two lovebirds have increased by 300 percent since Sunday night in a phenomenon they call “Monday morning chatterbacking.”
“A common trend we see after a big loss is what we call ‘Monday Morning Chatterbacking’ in which online fans look for culprits or scapegoats. Fair or unfair, there is always a great deal of fingerpointing, and the Romo/Simpson relationship is certainly top of mind with fans,” said Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of Nielsen Online Strategic Services and project manager for Nielsen’s 2008 Super Bowl monitoring program.
“Virtually every aspect of this relationship has been analyzed, dissected, debated, and critiqued by highly engaged football fans,” said Blackshaw. “Even Cabo San Lucas as a ‘strength-gathering’ vacation spot has been vigorously picked apart!”
Yeah, well, somebody really needs to give America something better to do, don’t you think?
