What was the upside? Somebody please explain it to me.

How was Tony Romo supposed to benefit from his off-week trip to Mexico with singer/actress/whatever-it-is-she-is Jessica Simpson? And, more important, how were the Cowboys supposed to benefit from their most important player jetting off to a resort the week before a playoff game?

Oh, I see. You’re telling me the trip allowed Romo to show up more relaxed for the Cowboys-Giants game Sunday. But couldn’t he and Simpson have shared a lazy cigarette in Dallas instead of in Los Cabos and been just as “relaxed” for the game?

(I’ve got to say, I don’t know how relaxing it would be going out with the fetching Ms. Simpson. Now, I’m not proposing that coaches go back to instituting a ban on sex the night before a game, but I am saying it’s not outrageous to suggest that a quarterback should be concentrating on the upcoming game and not on what Jessica’s father once referred to as her “double D’s”-and I don’t think he meant her doctoral dissertation.)

What’s the big deal, people say.

The big deal is that it became a Big Deal, with all the attendant media focus and cameras and gossip and distraction and Us Magazine details of the trip (“Tony couldn’t stop touching Jessica!”).

Romo might not care what people think, and the Cowboys might not care what the world thinks of them or their quarterback, but at what point does the attention on this lack of concern become a disturbance in itself?

There’s no way to say the Cowboys lost to the Giants on Sunday because of Romo’s ill-timed, south-of-the-border adventure.

But it’s also impossible to dismiss Romo’s roamings as a non-factor. The media hum about this was loud enough to pierce even the most plugged ears.

Beyond all that, I just don’t understand the “why” of the trip.

If Romo didn’t know a storm would erupt, then he’s incredibly naive. I don’t buy that. Any man who dates Simpson even once knows she attracts a battalion of paparazzi and that there are no quiet getaways. And any quarterback in the NFL knows which player gets the most attention, good or bad, on a football team. The Bears’ Rex Grossman can attest to that.

When those two forces meet, the result is the tabloid equivalent of a mushroom cloud.

I’ve known Cowboys coach Wade Phillips for a long time. I know why his players like him. He treats them like men, not like children or commodities. But he should have put his cowboy boot down on this one.

Where was the benefit of the trip to the resort? What was the greater good?

It’s true that the NFL is overcoached and overstructured. The league can make the military look unorganized. Coaches want to control everything, especially the players. But it’s also true that few sports are as choreographed as football and as reliant on teamwork. Anything can disrupt the equilibrium. Although Romo might not have been fazed by the furor over his trip with Simpson, perhaps some teammates were. These are creatures of habit. Monday, watch film. Tuesday, rest. Wednesday, get the game plan. Thursday and Friday, work out the kinks in the game plan. Saturday, walk through the plays. Sunday, play the game.

Nowhere in that structured existence does it say, watch as quarterback causes a huge fuss by hanging out with hot girlfriend in Mexico.

History is filled with players who knew how to have a good time on and off the field. Joe Namath. Max McGee. Mickey Mantle.

Michael Jordan might have gambled until the wee hours before games, but he had a body of work on the court that suggested he pretty much could do whatever he wanted on his own time and still score 45 points on company time. A player earns that freedom.

Tony Romo hadn’t done enough to do this to his team.