Here’s a simple, fun, sports experiment for you to try this holiday season. Go find a football fan — somewhere, anywhere — and ask him or her if they’d like to have Tony Romo under center for their favorite NFL team.

Chances are, you’ll hear “yes” a lot more often than you than you expect.

Bills fans would certainly sign up — poor quarterback play is likely to keep one of the NFL’s top defenses out of the playoffs this year. As a long time Jets fan, I am particularly qualified to discuss how receptive Gang Green’s fan base would be to the idea. It’s safe to say that after a season of watching Geno Smith and Michael Vick exchange the starting quarterback job like a hot potato, Romo would probably just a series or two to reach Chad Pennington-levels of affection in East Rutherford.

The reality is that 70 percent of the NFL’s franchises would be thrilled to get their Romo on, and Cowboy fans ought to be thanking their lucky stars that the undrafted free agent — and three-time Pro Bowler — fell into their laps 11 years ago.

Of course, that’s not the conversation we’re having about Romo today, nor has it ever been, really. Instead, we’ve spent the better part of the nine years since he became the Cowboys’ starting QB arguing about his association with a word that — even in the inherently ludicrous world of sports talk — has become a parody of itself.

By now, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the question: Is Tony Romo “clutch”? Yes! No! Maybe?!

You’ve almost certainly seen people wrangle with it — on television, on the radio, in print — and what makes the query so infuriating isn’t necessarily that people get it wrong; it’s that they are wasting time and energy trying to answer something that is purely illusory. Is Tony Romo “clutch”? We’ll answer that right after we figure out if he’s “elite,” “tough,” or “America’s Team’y” enough.

Thanks, Merriam-Webster!

“Clutch,” by definition, is a form of anti-knowledge; a concept that takes real data and information we compile through years of observation and record keeping, and replaces tangible evidence with the anecdotal variety — a series of imperfect and often colored recollections of certain high profile moments that blur the totality of other, more representative, though less memorable, moments.

That data, of course, fails to validate the widely held (and ludicrous) contention that Romo lacks the all-too-mysterious “clutch” gene. The man has 27 career game-winning drives in the fourth quarter or overtime — the most by any quarterback in the league since his ‘06 debut as a starter. Over that span Romo has compiled a passer rating of 101.0 in the second half of games when the score is within a touchdown, which just happens to be the second-highest mark by any player (min. 50 attempts).