John Ourand: Industry expects Tony Romo won’t return to CBS

[ASFN Admin]

You must be registered for see images attach

Credit: NFL on CBS

Tony Romo making his way back to CBS Sports is looking less likely by the day.

According to Puck’s John Ourand, who spoke with several sports media executives, the consensus across the industry is that Romo — sidelined indefinitely by CBS since late July — won’t be reclaiming his booth.

Whether or not you believe in second chances, CBS reportedly wants to get out of the Tony Romo business. And for better or worse, his recent arrest for an OWI in Wisconsin – and the humiliating body cam footage that followed — handed the network a convenient exit ramp it appears increasingly eager to take.

As The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand has previously reported, Romo’s contract — with $72 million remaining over four years — contains a morals clause, the standard provision networks lean on when a marquee talent can no longer represent the brand after public embarrassment.

CBS’s legal team could make a credible case that this OWI incident is fair grounds for cause. Had this happened in 1987, it likely would have faded from the news cycle long before Week 1 arrived. In 2026, footage of Romo’s arrest and sobriety test has already been chopped into memes. As both Marchand and Ourand have noted, every odd phrase or stray noise Romo makes on air now risks reviving that footage across social media, GIFs and screenshots resurfacing on command. It might sound trivial, but it’s exactly the sort of recurring headache a company already looking for an exit has little appetite to manage.

There’s a larger context at play here. Once the undisputed gold standard of NFL color commentary, Romo has watched his luster corrode over several seasons. Audiences grew weary of his theatrics, his overexuberance, his odd vocal tics, and increasingly baffling turns of phrase. He morphed from the smartest voice in your fantasy football league to a caricature of himself.

As the criticism started to mount, much of it from prominent media figures, there was conjecture around whether CBS itself was souring on the record-setting contract. In 2023, Marchand reported that CBS staged an “intervention” with the former quarterback. The network disputed that characterization, but then-CBS Sports chair Sean McManus later conceded he’d offered Romo pointed feedback for improvement.

Romo’s fall from stardom predates his operating a vehicle under the influence with an open container in the car. Fox’s Colin Cowherdbelieves CBS executives have resented Romo since the negotiations that produced his 10-year, $180 million deal in 2020. If that’s true, the network never let it show. Throughout his run at CBS, the network has constantly defended lapses in the booth, and so did his booth partner. Jim Nantz went out of his way in 2024 to call the constant scrutiny of Romo “unfair,” insisting his partner was still “subconsciously growing” and that their chemistry had never been better.

That patience now looks to have quietly expired.

With Romo no longer around for the network to defend at every turn, CBS will lean on J.J. Watt opposite Nantz and Tracy Wolfson. Perhaps this is merely a stopgap while Romo’s status sorts itself out. Or perhaps CBS is positioning itself to land a considerably bigger fish, with Greg Olsen, Troy Aikman, and Kirk Herbstreit all potential free agents after the 2026 NFL season. Ourand has previously named Watt and Olsen specifically as the two candidates CBS is eyeing for the long term. The former star tight end has made no secret of his desire to return to a top booth, and his current Fox contract includes a clause letting him leave for a No. 1 job elsewhere should one open up — the same job he lost when Fox installed Tom Brady, despite Olsen besting Brady for an Emmy in the category earlier this year. If a vacancy at another network materializes, Olsen is almost certain to explore it.

Conventional wisdom would say CBS doesn’t chase a name like Olsen’s unless it’s already decided Romo isn’t coming back.

But even if CBS’s succession plan plays out exactly as Ourand’s sourcing suggests, where Romo lands next is still anyone’s guess. Netflix’s four-game NFL slate could still have room for him. The streamer only just filled one of those seats, tapping Luke Kuechly for its Week 1 game in Melbourne, and Kuechly brings nowhere near the name recognition or track record Romo would. Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football booth could also open up, with Al Michaels and Herbstreit widely expected to call it quits after this season. A return to a CBS studio role, in the mold of Phil Simms before him, isn’t out of the question if the network wants to keep Romo’s star power without the weekly broadcast headache. Neither is a jump to the Fox studio, where Romo’s ties to the Cowboys — a team Fox airs more than anyone — would fit neatly alongside the network’s history of stacking panels with recognizable playing names. Or Romo could skip broadcasting altogether, lean into the golf habit that got him into this mess in the first place, and watch CBS’s reconfiguration of its top broadcast booths unfold from the fairway.

The post John Ourand: Industry expects Tony Romo won’t return to CBS appeared first on Awful Announcing.

Continue reading...