Romo wasn’t built in a day
Ex-Cowboy’s crash coursee to become CBS’ top analystst
The first game Tony Romo called live was in a “makeshift deer stand” about 80 yards away from the field.
That was the scene in Canton, Ohio, for the Hall of Fame Game on Aug. 3 when Romo and playby-play man Jim Nantz called the first game of the preseason as a practice session for the analyst.
“That was bizarre,” Nantz told The Post this week at CBS’ NFL luncheon. “We were so far away. I told Tony, ‘I promise it’s going to be better than this.’ Even from that vantage point, if that broadcast was on the air I think people would have been impressed.”
The process for getting Romo prepared started months before that, not long after the veteran Cowboys quarterback decided to retire and join CBS in April. He estimates that executive producer Jim Rikhoff has been in his Dallas-area home three times a week since the Masters prepping him for his Sept. 10 debut in the Raiders-Titans game in Nashville.
They’ve watched game tape, gone over the mechanics of a broadcast, learned the jargon of the booth and Romo and Nantz have now called eight games together (five from the studio, three from the stadiums like Canton).
“When we first started, I heard other analysts just showed up for Game 1 and go out there and do the game,” said Romo, shaking his head in disbelief before recalling some of his prep work.
“They were like, ‘Tony give us some telestrator’ and I was like, don’t know what a telestrator is. What’s a telestrator?’ I don’t know how you possibly could have done that. I feel much more comfortable now.”
Romo, 37, looked the part in Midtown this week. He spent most of the two-hour media ses- sion surrounded by a handful of reporters (an unusual scene for these events often reserved for 1-on-1 interviews) answering questions in a relaxed manner, a scenario CBS likely envisioned when it threw him into the No. 1 booth over Phil Simms. The network has a new star, but one whom fans and critics will be waiting to pounce on if he stumbles.
“Now he gets all the bells and whistles for the first time next week,” Nantz said. “I am excited for him to take that next step: from being reliant off a monitor to being in the stadium, putting that atmosphere into the mix and having the normal broadcast position and access to the teams, replays. It’s going to be a new animal for him next week, he’s going to be raw for a while.”
While Rikhoff and Nantz have been his main mentors, Romo said he has received plenty of advice from others in the industry naming Cris Collinsworth, Al Michaels, Joe Buck, Gary Danielson and Kirk Herbstreit.
“I’ve been lucky to have a bunch of people who just want to help out,” Romo said. “There’s been a lot of different advice, it’s just a matter of having to morph it into your own and that’s at’s where the practice helps.”
Nantz and Romo’s firstst live broadcast was supposed to be last Friday’s preseason game between the Chiefs and Seahawks in Seattle. Butt Romo’s wife gave birth to their third child, a boy, on Wednesday forcing him to miss the final tune-up.
“My wife was upset, shehe said, ‘Jim [Rikhoff] has been staying here all month,onth, he should be here for thee birth,’” Romo joked.