One of the finest NFL broadcasting moments in recent memory came Jan. 20 2019, the night the New England Patriots’ dynasty kept the Kansas City Chiefs from starting their own with an overtime win in the AFC
championship game.
While Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes earned their own headlines, it was CBS announcer Tony Romo who dominated the Monday morning conversation. The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback, who had just finished his second season as the network’s No. 1 game analyst, emptied the clip on his already trademarked predictions as the Patriots offense mounted a comeback. He was often right, demonstrating the skill that had made him a home-run hire for CBS and injected life back into a booth alongside play-by-play broadcaster Jim Nantz.
That night, Romo was more than assumptive. He was clairvoyant.
“Tony Romo shined in AFC Championship broadcast” read a headline from Sports Illustrated.
Unfortunately for Romo and CBS — and honestly, for fans who want to learn more about the game they are watching — that was the peak of Romo’s might with the mic.
The offensive tendencies he’d mastered and defenses he studied were fresh in his mind at the time. His relationships with the subjects were tighter. And he never again matched that level. Instead of becoming the next great broadcaster, Romo blew it.
Tony Romo, CBS part ways
Romo and CBS mutually parted ways officially Friday, spelling the end of a drawn-out leave of absence that could have only ended this way.
Romo’s broadcasting career was careening long before he decided to drive after becoming clearly inebriated at a golf outing in Wisconsin on July 23. For starters, his style — I often wondered why he was yelling at me while I sat on my couch — wasn’t for everybody. In the color analyst role, it’s drilled into the person to dispense information and opinion succinctly, often in the 15-20 seconds between the end of the play and when the next one begins.
And that’s the rub — calling NFL games, or any sport, is not easy. The line between entertaining and informative has never been more difficult to balance, especially in a “second-screen” society with divided attention spans.
For a while, Romo made it look easy until it looked like he’d rather be doing anything else. Prior to reaching that point, however, he made perhaps his most significant contribution to the business by securing a 10-year, $180 million contract from CBS in early 2020 as rights holders prepared for another negotiation with the NFL. Now the price of the Buck — pun intended, for Joe — has gone up for everybody.
Romo wasn’t the first former player to immediately wind up in a broadcast booth but he opened executives’ minds to the idea. Tom Brady took a gap year, but it’s hard to imagine he would be calling games for FOX had Romo not cleared a path.
Former CBS Sports head Sean McManus has basically admitted publicly that the network had to ask Romo to study more while preparing for games. He didn’t know names. His interjections became intolerable. “Ahhhhhhhh I don’t know, Jim!” became the Sunday afternoon version of a cuckoo bird. He effectively ruined a walk-off touchdown in the Super Bowl because he could not restrain himself. Universities don’t poll the popularity of NFL broadcasters, but if they did, it would be hard to imagine Romo clearing the approval rating of a modern president.
Tony Romo OWI arrest
What Romo did off the field — he ultimately pleaded no contest to three charges relating to operating a vehicle while intoxicated — is inexcusable. Whether it should have cost him his job is up for debate, but that CBS executives saw this as an opportunity to move on rather than endure the public rehabilitation of its employee is all you need to know.
And to be clear: we all want Romo to address the health matters that led to his alcohol dependency, as he said in his public statements released through representatives.
Nantz and JJ Watt will continue the rest of the season as the network’s No. 1 team. Nantz isn’t blameless here either, as his last two NFL partners in Phil Simms and Romo both regressed while calling games next to him.
Romo didn’t revolutionize football broadcasting. He did, however, permanently alter the standard on which we judge our announcers. And after the 2018 AFC title game, it felt like he would be a part of our football lives forever. Now he’ll be lucky if Skechers wants him back.
Who could have predicted that? Not even late-2010s Tony Romo.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: From predictive to pariah, Tony Romo's ouster a blessing for CBS | Opinion
