Jessica, Gisele don’t
Super Bowl her over

Robyn’s ’Hood
By Robyn McCloskey

On a Sunday night earlier this month, I did what most of the country did. I got together with some friends and watched the Super Bowl.
Typically at these events, I am much more interested in the food that is being served and the people I’ll be sharing it with than I am in the two teams that are playing in this mega-hyped game or what their season records might be.
I’m interested in more weighty aspects of the game. Who’s singing the national anthem? Who’s performing the halftime show? And, of course, I watch those highly anticipated commercials that cost thousands of dollars per nanosecond (supposedly $2.7 million for a half-minute) to air.
But for the first time that I can recall, I actually watched the game. I can’t say it’s because of an interest in football. It’s because of watching football on a home theater that our hosts installed in their basement, complete with a high-def 8-foot-wide screen watched from reclining leather chairs with cup holders.
And since I actually was paying attention to the action between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, I couldn’t help but get caught up in the drama. Not the game, mind you, at least not until the very end, but rather the drama in the personal lives of some of the players.
I should note that I wasn’t exactly clueless up to this point. I was on top of my game with the whole Tony Romo-Jessica Simpson dating debacle, and how, after the Eagles whipped the Cowboys near the end of the season, there were rumblings that the Cowboys seemed to lose when Jessica was watching Tony from the VIP box. Interesting how after that loss and the ensuing media frenzy, Jessica and other parts of her often-highlighted anatomy were no-shows at the Cowboys next game against the Giants, yet the Cowboys lost anyway.
Loyalty is one thing Ms. Simpson will never be accused of. Her reps explained why she was not in attendance, some lame excuse about having to work on an album or having to pick up her sister at the plastic surgeon’s office, I can’t remember which.
Either way, when it came down to it, Jessica was not a factor in the outcome of the Cowboys’ games. Kind of like how she’s not a factor in anything else in the world.
Just the same, I always find it interesting during football games when the cameras pan to the loved ones of the players. I know that New England quarterback Tom Brady and Victoria’s Secret model Gisele Bundchen are an item. But I couldn’t help but comment on the fact that every time the lascivious Super Bowl cameraman lingered on Gisele, she seemed much more interested in her never-ending glass of red wine than in the health of her main squeeze as he wearily crawled from under a mountain of 2,700 pounds of flesh — defensive linemen, I believe they’re called.
The girl looked downright bored. Or maybe she was just buzzed. Hard to tell. But would it have killed her to shout out a cheer for Tom, pump a fist in the air, smile that Victoria’s Secret smile? It might do a lot to influence whether your boyfriend gets a Super Bowl ring.
On second thought, Tom already had three of them. What’s another? But it would have been his first Super Bowl ring with Gisele, and maybe that’s what happened to poor Tom, maybe every time he threw the ball and then tried to catch Gisele’s eye for a dreamy “that’s my Tommy” look he instead caught her in the midst of a collagen-enhanced supermodel pout, and perhaps that upset him to the point of distraction, causing him to think, “Oh no, I think she’s mad at me . . . now how am I supposed to win the Super Bowl?”
Which brings us to the quarterback who did win the Super Bowl, the Giants’ Eli Manning. It seemed Eli didn’t have any tipsy lingerie models seated in his VIP box, no singing blonde bimbos. Just ordinary family and friends. That is if you can consider ordinary a family that also has Eli’s Super Bowl-winning quarterback brother (Peyton of the Colts) and their pretty decent quarterback father who unfortunately played for a lousy team in the ’70s (Archie of the Saints).
Eli isn’t tabloid fodder, at least not yet. He’s engaged to his college sweetheart, Abby McGrew. The low-profile Abby isn’t famous for anything other than her engagement to Mr. Manning. She’s just a working girl studying fashion in New York City who manages to avoid flashing cameras.
Maybe Tony Romo and Tom Brady should ask if she has any single friends. ••
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears each week in the Northeast Times. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net