'Romo' Comes Clean

This story originally aired on Oct. 16, 2005.

Who is the NFL's greatest defensive player of the last 20 years? Tough call. Who is the most controversial? Easy: linebacker Bill Romanowski.

In one of the longest careers in the NFL, Romo, as he was known, played for four teams and led defenses that won four Super Bowls.

In a brutally honest book about a brutal career that correspondent Scott Pelley first reported on last year, Romo admits that he has regrets, steroids, the cheap shots, but he told us there was only one way to survive in the NFL: with overpowering strength and hatred.

"I felt I could take myself to a place where other guys weren't willing to go because come Sunday after a game, I already started hating the next opponent. I started hating the guy I was going to go against," says Romanowski. "I hated the coaches. I hated their fans. I hated their family. You name it. And by the time I got onto that field come Sunday, watch out because there was rage."

Number 53 rode that rage to become one of the most feared linebackers in the NFL.

Nobody goes to the game to watch men play nice, but for Romanowski it wasn't enough to tackle. He aimed to annihilate, to take an opponent out of the game or out for the season.

He hit in a relentless 271 games and never missed one in 16 seasons. An incredible stat, considering the average player hobbles to survive three seasons.

With a name that barely fit on his shoulders, fans called him "Romo" and that is what he became. "To take that field and have every person in that stadium chanting your name, 'Romo! Romo!' How can you not get caught up in that?" says Romanowski.

Who exactly was Romo? "Romo was the hardest working S.O.B. that ever stepped on that field," says Romanowski.

People who despise him don't argue with that. He was known as a fanatic about training, never taking a day off, even in the off season.

But pushing plates was only half the secret. Romanowski had a nearly-religious — some would say weird — devotion to supplements. At home, he had a tackle box of vitamins, minerals, enzymes and amino acids. He took 100 pills a day and made a science of everything from herbs to acupuncture.

He even tried live cell therapy, getting injected with cells from Scottish black sheep. Romanowski says the treatment was supposed to help him heal from the physical trauma he was experiencing on the field.

He spent $200,000 a year on supplements, doctors and therapists and admits he didn't know what was in some of the potions they were pouring.

Romanowski says that in Philadelphia the team sent him to a hospital for something called a Trauma I.V. "When I walked in the hospital on crutches, and I ran out of the hospital, I knew it was something good."

Once, after knee surgery in the off season, he was back in the gym four hours later with anesthesia still drifting through his head.

What was driving him? "A fear of failure. The fear of not being good enough," Romanowski says. "In professional football the competition is so intense. 'Is he good enough? Is he fast enough? Does he hit people hard enough? Does he get hurt a lot?' I didn't want that to happen to me. I didn't want to lose my job."

Romanowski says that pressure is what drove him every day. And it drove him, time to time, over the edge.

Romo wasn't just the meanest. Some would say he was the dirtiest. Fans were outraged when he spit in the face of wide receiver J.J. Stokes, something for which Romanowski was fined $7,500.

But he defends other hits, like one that busted the jaw of quarterback Kerry Collins in two places. Collins was out for the season and the hit cost Romo $20,000.

Romanowski says it was "one of the best hits of my career. It was perfect. It was one that you dream about."

In his book, "Romo: My Life on the Edge," Romanowski writes about a playoff game against the Giants where he found himself buried with running back Dave Meggett.

"I am pissed. And I am down there just trying to rip that ball out of his hands. And all I could get was a finger. And at the time I thought it was his. But, just, whatever it was … I just snapped it. And I could hear a scream at the bottom of the pile," Romanowski says.

Romanowski says he now feels "awful" about the incident.

His more visible fouls made him a league leader in fines, costing him tens of thousands of dollars.

In 2003, he got into a training camp fight with teammate Marcus Williams and crushed his eye socket. Romanowski paid $415,000 in a court settlement.

If this extraordinary violence sounds like "roid rage" from steroid abuse, Romanowski says it is not. He says he used steroids only in the end, from 2001 to 2003.

He got them, he says, from Victor Conte, head of the infamous sports supplement lab called BALCO, the Bay Area Lab Cooperative.

Romanowski says Conte gave him bullet-sized vials of a foul tasting gold liquid. It was a new anabolic steroid the NFL wasn't testing for, known as "THG," what Conte called "the clear."

"He called it a clear substance, possibly a pro-hormone, a designer steroid," says Romanowski. "He really didn't know exactly what it was. He just thought maybe it could help. And it wasn't something they could test for."

While Romanowski admits to THG, Conte was pushing other banned performance drugs, so Pelley asked if there was something else Romanowski had not admitted to.

"Did you take human growth hormone from Victor Conte as well?" Pelley says.

"I took it a brief period of time. And I didn't receive any great benefits. Definitely didn't receive what I got out of THG or what I thought I was getting out of THG," Romanowski says.

In his book, Romanowski wrote, "As soon as I found out something could be tested for, I stopped taking it."

"I compromised my morality to get ahead, to play another year, to play two more years, to win another Super Bowl," says Romanowski.

The BALCO controversy ran for two years.

What was the most difficult part for the NFL star? "The embarrassment to my family, and friends, to teammates, team owners and the league, that hurt. And ultimately a little boy that looks up to his dad, and he said, 'Dad, do you do drugs?' And that one hurt me more than anything," Romanowski says.

Romanowski says his son heard about the drugs at school. "I gave him the best answer I knew how to give him at the time. And I said, 'Dalton, Daddy did a lot of things to deal with the pain of the game.'"

"The pain of the game" finally caught up with him. He likens his hits to car crashes and Romanowski was suffering — and hiding — severe concussions throughout his entire career.

He recalled a collision with Curtis Martin that injured his brain so badly that he went to the sideline and sat on quarterback John Elway's lap.

"The end was getting near. And it scared me," says Romanowski, admitting that he told no one. "The concussions were racking up. Every time I would get a good hit on somebody I would be dazed, confused. My memory was starting to go."

Romanowski estimates he suffered between eight and 20 concussion over the years.

The last concussion came during a game against Denver in 2003, the last game in the career he so violently defended.

Julie Romanowski, his wife of 12 years, was in the stadium. "Then when the team doctor came out and said 'We want to admit Bill immediately to the hospital,' and he came out and he said, 'Julie, please just take me home. I don't want to go.' And at that moment, I saw somebody who was normally larger than life turn to me in almost a boyish way asking for help."

Romanowski couldn't see straight or balance. He had headaches and nausea. Now, two years later, doctors say he shows profound slowing in cognitive function, which may get better with time.

"And you know, I think you have these illusions, dreams, nightmares, that maybe you can still do it," says Romanowski, admitting that he never cleaned out his locker in Oakland.

For the longest moment he seemed back in some stadium watching the clock run out on his 16 years.

Since he was 10 years old, Romanowski's universe has existed inside 100 yards. Now his Sundays are on the sideline at his son's soccer games with his wife Julie and daughter Alexandra.

And the only thing he is hitting is the surf in northern California. In a few years, he will be eligible for the Hall of Fame but the sports writers who vote will have to balance Romanowski's winning record against the confessions in the book and interview of an NFL hit man.