Wild Bill

You keep waiting for someone to press the point, asking someone like Johnnie Cochran to defend Denver linebacker Bill Romanowski in a Saturday night 11th-hour commitment hearing, a la “Miracle on 34th Street.”

The guy appears deranged, acts deranged--it’s all there on videotape week after week--and if you’re playing for the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl XXXIII, you probably want to go home after the game with your head still attached.

But Romo’s a master at making you lose your head, and for that matter, making you lose the game. He has played for the 49ers, Eagles and Broncos, has never missed a game in 11 years, and his employers have won more than 75% of the time.

“He brings everything I look for in a player because the game means the world to him,” Denver Coach Mike Shanahan says. “Every game, you’re going to get his best shot, regardless of the situation. I don’t say that lightly.”

Or Romanowski might punch him in the face.

There might be nobody in football who does more to prepare himself for battle than Romo, who swallows sports supplements by the handful every day.

“About 50 pills a day,” he says. “You wanna see?”

And he holds up a tray with 15 or so different vitamins, presumably one to add more pep to his trash talk during a game.

Four hours before kickoff, Romo is off limits to human beings.

“That’s a little exaggerated,” he says. “Guys just know I’m in the zone.”

They know this because he has been seen banging his head into the goal posts before games, like some kind of agitated woodpecker, and if you were the opposing quarterback and witnessed such a thing, what would you think?

“We’re coached to hit people as hard as we can possibly hit them,” Romanowski explains. “I’ve never heard a coach say, ‘Don’t hit that guy hard again.’ ”

Before each game, he goes out onto the field all by himself, and well, he dances, like a ballerina.

“I wouldn’t call them ballerina exercises,” he says and he didn’t have to say it twice. “It’s more track and field stuff. I’m trying to get every muscle in my body warmed up. People probably say that it looks goofy, but not to me.”

He has a biomechanics specialist on call, along with a track coach and a chiropractor; he gets a daily massage, applies magnets to any bodily aches or pains, exercises in the swimming pool and turns out the lights every night at the Broncos’ training facility.

When Jacksonville defeated the Broncos in the playoffs two years ago, Romanowski kept a picture of Jaguar quarterback Mark Brunell with him during the off-season to inspire him to work even harder.

Shanahan says, “When I was an offensive coordinator with the 49ers, it didn’t matter what time I went downstairs, Bill was always around the locker room, studying film or getting a massage or doing something to give him a better chance of success on Sunday.”

Romanowski is the NFL’s updated and polished version of Dick Butkus or Ray Nitschke, with the good manners to shy away from such comparisons. But call him a throwback, and he might hug you, calling that the ultimate compliment.

“I can’t compare to those guys, but I can try,” he says. “They left it all on the field, played every play like their last, and anything went.”

Romo is now smiling: “Anything went. . . . “

And he nods his head in agreement.

“There’s a part of that that’s in my game, but back then, they could spit on guys, they could punch guys, they could rip helmets off,” and Romo knows he was born 20 years too late.

“That was a part of the game back then. Now that’s not a part of the game. It’s a cleaner game; they don’t want that stuff going on. They don’t want a bad image for their product.”

But if he could go back in time, “I’d want to be [Pittsburgh linebacker] Jack Lambert,” he says. “To me he’s a guy that stands out, a guy who wasn’t fast enough, big enough, strong enough, but was always there making plays. He was a leader on his team, always going to Pro Bowls and he took overachiever to a new level. His intensity was contagious on the football field, and all his teammates thrived on that.”

Romo, of course, is also describing himself. While his teammates went out to eat crab and soak up the South Beach scenery in Miami, he went to the hotel swimming pool, put on his flotation belt and worked on his body.

“I’ve said it my whole career, there are so many guys who would have, could have, should have and who were better than I could ever be, and they’re no longer in the game,” he says. “If only they had spent more time. . . . I am what I am because of how hard I work.”

He’s also nothing like he looks on the field. Not only is he one of the most approachable athletes in football--six of the seven days of the week--but he’s smart, articulate and even kind.

“People who know Bill Romanowski and think he’s a bad guy, they don’t know him,” Shanahan says. “He’s a class act.”

Unless, of course, you are the opposition Sunday, when the conversation takes a different turn.

“I don’t think I’m a very good trash talker,” he says. “I have, in the past, mentioned mothers and sisters, but I try to stay away from that.”

He tries.

“Watching myself on videotape, I notice why people might not like me,” he says. “But the bottom line is, I’m trying to beat people with great technique and beat people the way the game is supposed to be played.

“In the heat of battle, other things happen. I tend to be a guy who pushes the limit once in a while. I don’t think I ever come close to just losing it on the football field, but if it’s punching a guy after a play because he held me, yeah, I’ve done that. I’m not proud of it, but, yeah, it happens.”

He’s known best for spitting in the face of San Francisco wide receiver J.J. Stokes, the play shown over and over again on replay. And although that probably branded him a dirty player for the rest of his career, Romanowski fessed up to the shameful behavior, never once backing away from those who wanted to talk over and over about the incident.

“I paid a price for that,” he says. “The negative attention I got not only hurt myself, but my family and teammates. I was wrong. I went too far, and now I will do everything I can to make sure that never happens again.”

But the Romo crazy-man legend grows. There were the times he broke quarterback Kerry Collins’ jaw, taunted Pittsburgh quarterback Kordell Stewart, got into the head of Jet wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson, and hit Jet running back Curtis Martin so hard that both players had to leave the field to locate their senses.

“Lost my balance,” he says in describing the concussion he suffered in the AFC championship game. “I never thought twice about whether to go back in. I had a one-track mind and that was getting back into the football game.”

Romanowski, who has not drawn a penalty all season, calls former 49er teammate Ronnie Lott the hardest hitter he has ever known, and he follows suit, trying to knock the opposition into another world. But for this Super Bowl, he says, he is dedicated to playing only good, solid, clean football.

“Given the magnitude of this game and the millions of people that are watching, my focus has got to be on playing a great, clean football game,” he says. “I will be on my best behavior.”

But you can bet, heads will still roll.

Super Bowl XXXIII

Denver vs. Atlanta

Sunday

3:15 p.m.

Channel 11