IRVING, Texas - Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, by his own admission, has said it 55,000 times - he's just trying to get better as a player.
But no matter how much he says it, that's not what people see a lot of the time. They see the golf tournaments in the off-season, the weekend beach vacation during a bye week, the famous blondes on his arm. They see the celebrity quarterback former Cowboys coach Bill Parcells warned Romo not to become.
But that's not what current Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips sees. He sees a hard worker who has grown as a person in the last two-and-a-half years.
"When you work like Tony does, when you work during the season but also during the off-season like he does - he comes in and devotes a lot of time in the off-season, as much as anybody we have during the off-season - I think he is going to mature that way," Phillips said.
Unfortunately for Romo, Phillips does not have the last word when it comes to how the quarterback is viewed publicly. Romo understands that, and has accepted it.
Romo became the franchise quarterback when he was handed a six-year, $67 million contract extension in the middle of the 2007 season, an extension that almost looks puny compared to the new, $90-plus million deals of Giants and Chargers quarterbacks Eli Manning and Philip Rivers. But with that status, Romo inherited almost unreal expectations to meet, and a nice microscope to live under, all of which is just part of the job to him.
"Until we do something that people want to be really proud of, they are going to say [I'm underperforming]," Romo said. "They deserve that right. That is part of being a fan.
"I'm that way when I watch other sports. 'Oh what is he doing? Why did he do that? Why did he make that decision?' I'm not naive to that. I understand. It's not going to stop me from working and trying to get better the next time."
And Romo, for all his "getting better" talk, is not ready to say he's there. A playoff win, a Super Bowl appearance, even an MVP might not be enough to quench his thirst for self-improvement.
"Either you are trying to get better or you are content as a player," Romo said. "I am not content."
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