Tony Romo, once CBS’ ‘golden boy’ announcer, brushes off the backlash
LAS VEGAS
Inside the Mandalay Bay Hotel on Tuesday, Tony Romo sat next to his broadcast partner, Jim Nantz, surrounded by dozens of reporters and cameras.
“How do you handle the criticism, Tony?” someone asked.
Romo, wearing a gray jacket, tailored slacks and white sneakers with no socks, smiled.
“I was the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys,” he said. “This is small potatoes.”
That Romo, who will call Sunday’s Super Bowl with Nantz on CBS, is taking such questions is jolting. Five years ago at this event, he was fresh off perhaps one of greatest announcing performances in sports history, having correctly predicted a series of plays between the Kansas City Chiefs and New England Patriots in the AFC championship game.
Stephen A. Smith said Romo was the greatest announcer he’d ever seen; the New Yorker called him “a genius.” A year later, CBS gave him a raise from $3 million to $17 million. At that year’s Super Bowl, he was a bigger star than everyone but Tom Brady.
But in the years since, something has happened, at least among serious football consumers: The people have turned on Romo.
The backlash has been swift and ubiquitous.
Chris Russo, on “First Take” on ESPN, killed Romo for naming the wrong player when recalling a famous play from decades ago. Columnists have ripped his chemistry with Nantz. Others have called for Greg Olsen, Fox’s lead analyst, to take his job (though Brady will replace him next year). Dave Portnoy piled on.
At Tuesday’s news conference, a reporter put it to Romo like this:
“Have you changed at all since you started announcing, or have people watching you changed?”
“You call the game that’s in front of you,” Romo said. “There’s not a lot different in my personality.”
Romo’s online tormentors have noted that he can be buddy-buddy with Nantz, so much so that it borders on goofy; that he focuses on the quarterback at the expense of other nuances of the games; and that he can tell you over and over that “this is the play of the game.” When he didn’t know the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 1-2 running back combo during an earlyround playoff game, it appeared to expose a gaping hole in his basic knowledge of the team.
But some of these qualities are exactly what catapulted him to stardom. He was predicting plays, yes, but he was more than a parlor trick. He brought an exuberance to the booth that was infectious and a departure from traditional analysts. He loved football and wanted the audience to know it. And he’s still that guy.
What Romo is not is the industry’s shiny new toy anymore. After his initial star turn, he was the subject of an industry-altering bidding war between ESPN
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WILD-CARD PLAYOFFS
SATURDAY, JAN. 13
Kansas City 26, Miami 7
Houston 45, Cleveland 14
SUNDAY, JAN. 14
Green Bay 48, Dallas 32
Detroit 24, L.A. Rams 23
MONDAY, JAN. 15
Buffalo 31, Pittsburgh 17
Tampa Bay 32, Philadelphia 9
DIVISIONAL PLAYOFFS SATURDAY, JAN. 20
Baltimore 34, Houston 10
San Francisco 24, Green Bay 21 SUNDAY, JAN. 21
Detroit 31, Tampa Bay 23 Kansas City 27, Buffalo 24
CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS SUNDAY, JAN. 28
AFC
Kansas City 17, Baltimore 10 NFC
San Francisco 34, Detroit 31
SUPER BOWL LVIII
SUNDAY
At Las Vegas
Kansas City vs. San Francisco, 6:30 (CBS) and CBS, which doesn’t exactly fit with his awshucks vibes.
“When you’re on TV and you got 35-40 million people watching and you’re making $17 million, people want to nitpick every little thing you do,” said Booger McFarland, a former Monday Night Football analyst. “They’re not hoping you enjoy your $17 million.”
Nantz gently came to Romo’s defense at Tuesday’s press event. “We’re all going to end up on the short end of the stick sometimes.” In an interview with The Washington Post last year, he was less gentle: “Reporters with nothing else to write have agendas and are looking for clicks and attention.”