Tony Romo Is Going to Be Just Fine in the Tom Brady Era

CBS's top announcer shouldn't be thinking about Brady at all.

Tom R. Smedes/Special to RGJ / USA TODAY NETWORK

CBS's top NFL booth woke up early and visited the CBS Mornings set on Wednesday because it won't be long until meaningful football dominates weekend plans. Jim Nantz, Tony Romo and Tracy Wolfson sat on comfortable chairs for an advertisement disguised as an interview to drum up interest for the thing America is most interested in. This is why you get Nate Burleson!

At one point during the segment, Gayle King brought up the subject of Tom Brady, FOX's new $375-million man and the subject of much anticipation.

Romo, saying something but not really saying anything at all, offered this up:

“We all know Tom [Brady] well,” he said. “You gotta remember, Jim’s [Nantz] done the most Tom Brady football of anyone (in broadcasting)—literally over 100 games. I think it’s great. I think it’s great for the industry that people want to go into this position and these roles. I think you find that the NFL has that grab. This [quarterbacks becoming announcers] was not always that, but Troy Aikman, I felt like really started this.

“Now, it’s part of possibly an arc in your career. But Tom’s gonna do great. He’s working as hard as anybody.”

It's a collection of words few would ever give any thought to, but apparently provided a jumping-off point for For The Win to publish a piece titled Tony Romo praising Tom Brady joining NFL announcing is like a dinosaur hyping up comets. And though I may quibble with the conclusions therein, it's important to acknowledge that it's a heck of a headline. Credit where it's due.

The premise is that Romo is somehow unaware that Brady could supplant him as America's most beloved broadcaster.

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If Brady’s awesome at the job for Fox — unfortunately, as much as it pains me to admit out loud in public, he probably will be — then he will be propped up by the football media landscape more than Romo ever was. It won’t be close. Because of Brady’s well-established, built-in playing resume, he can be so good at announcing that he might almost make the days of Romo offering insightful, worthwhile analysis seem like they never happened. And to be candid, that feels so long ago that I’m not sure it happened anymore myself.

Romo talking about how Brady working for Fox is excellent for the broadcast industry is him missing the mark on his own place in football. For cinephiles, it’s like Blockbuster praising Netflix for how it will revolutionize the DVD market. For you work-from-home 9-5ers, it’s like Skype giving Zoom some public shine for jumping into the video call space. For you history buffs out there,  it’s like Napoleon Bonaparte telling British naval commander Horatio Nelson, “good job” for hamstringing his navy.

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Again, the prose sings and there's a dearth of interesting writing on the internet so it's nice to read some. Having said that, the more accurate truth here is that Romo is going to be just fine. He's in the fourth year of a 10-year deal paying him $180 million. To the extent that any external criticism matters to him, it's already existed for a few years and the checks still clear. And he's still on the top assignments. Hell, it feels like CBS would be thrilled if Romo stuck around for another 25 years. So what, exactly, are the stakes here?

Brady is going to be a sideshow. But this is the NFL. There's no chance of CBS losing any type of meaningful ratings points because America prefers one analyst to the other. That's if the No. 1 booths are going against each other in the same timeslot and in that case, Romo won't even have to listen to Brady at all. He can continue to collect about $1 million every time he works and play golf on the days that he doesn't. A sweet gig if you can get it, regardless of who his counterpart at Fox is in a particular year.

Plus, are we 100 percent sure Brady is going to somehow transform himself out of polarity and others' jealousy to become universally loved? Are we 100 percent sure he's going to be as good as Romo, let alone better?

In this analogy Brady isn't a comet carrying existential threat on its back. He's simply another dinosaur roaming in an adjacent area to Romo's. They'll probably coexist without incident because there's plenty to feed on to keep everyone fat and giggly.