Tim Benz: Is Tony Romo, or any NFL analyst, worth $14 million?
A report from Front Office Sports states that ESPN is preparing to offer CBS NFL analyst Tony Romo somewhere between $10-$14 million annually.
Let’s split the difference and say it’s $12 million.
If Romo were to sign that deal, he’d make more cash in 2020 as a broadcaster than:
• The highest paid Pittsburgh Pirate (Starling Marte - $11.5 million)
• The highest paid Pittsburgh Penguin (Evgeni Malkin - $9.5 million)
• Any Pittsburgh Steeler besides quarterback Ben Roethlisberger ($21 million)
I can’t envision a day when a sports broadcaster is worth that much to a network.
Any sports broadcaster. On any network.
According to the report, Romo is currently earning $4 million with CBS. Troy Aikman is making $7.5 million at Fox. And Jon Gruden was making $6 million on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” before he went back to coaching with the Oakland Raiders.
It’s unclear what Romo would be doing for ESPN. Presumably he’d be the new lead analyst on the “MNF” broadcasts. One would assume he’d either usurp Anthony “Booger” McFarland entirely or relegate McFarland back to the Booger Mobile on the sidelines.
In the report, Michael McCarthy speculates that “Romo could also potentially quarterback ESPN’s NFL game coverage if parent Disney acquires a Sunday afternoon game package from rival Fox Sports, CBS Sports and NBC Sports during the next round of NFL TV negotiations in 2020-2021.”
OK. So maybe two games per week and the usual amount of guest hits on various ESPN-TV and radio shows. Perhaps ESPN thinks Romo is a marketable star that will draw additional sponsorships, like what he does for Corona or Sketchers.
For $14 million, though? Yeesh!
Until those hypotheticals pan out, this must be about “MNF.” Perhaps ESPN is feeling its oats regarding “MNF” again and wants to capitalize on the product’s recent uptick in momentum.
Via SportsMediaWatch.com, “ESPN finished the season averaging 12.57 million viewers for Monday night games, up 8% from last year (11.65M), up 17% from 2017 (10.79M), and its highest average since 2015.”
However, those numbers essentially speak to my skepticism about the need for such an exorbitant fee for a game broadcaster.
McFarland generally seemed to be well received by audiences when he was on the field as a de facto second color analyst in his traveling sideline contraption two years ago.
But once he took over for Jason Witten as the lone analyst in the booth, he got slammed on social media from sarcastic viewers as much as his famously “turn-of-phrase-challenged” predecessor did before he returned to the Cowboys this season.
Let’s just say, fans appear to have caught on to Booger’s tendency to state the obvious.
When you hire Booger McFarland to design your packaging pic.twitter.com/fa07yDEvxY
— NFL Memes (@NFL_Memes) January 10, 2020
Booger McFarland has decided to take up baking as a hobby pic.twitter.com/ju1UubRAJi
— Daddy Darnold (@daddy_darnold) January 10, 2020
"Because the LSU Tigers are playing the Clemson Tigers, the Tigers will absolutely win the National Championship." - Booger McFarland pic.twitter.com/P7dKkIXUA4
— Jason Crownover (@JCrownover25) December 29, 2019
"If Tony Romo gets this record making deal, then he would be the highest paid sportscaster, ever." ~ Booger McFarland ~ pic.twitter.com/4Bl4UJtsFx
— Jason Rivera (@cameltoeinspndx) January 13, 2020
“According to my sources Tua Tagovailoa will either return to Alabama or go the NFL. If he returns to Bama he will play QB, if he goes to the NFL he will play QB for one of those teams.”
- Booger McFarland (probably) pic.twitter.com/E9wdsRgLGh
— StadiumDrivePod (@StadiumDrivePod) January 5, 2020
Meanwhile, Romo has built a reputation as somewhat of a color analyst savant with crystal ball-esque predictive skills when it comes to play-calling.
Yet, for as much of an improvement as Romo may be, is he really going to encourage more people to watch the games? Or are the quality of the matchups and scores of the games themselves going make people watch?
It seems obvious. So I’ll go with choice B, Booger.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Romo is sharp. I enjoy listening to him a great deal. And if he can pull a paycheck like that from ESPN, good for him.
I simply can’t imagine watching a Monday night game for one minute longer — or tuning in at all — just because Romo is on the call.
As good as he may be, I have never done that while he has been at CBS, and I don’t plan on starting now.
ESPN can keep throwing good money toward chasing the ghost of what “MNF” used to be in the Howard Cosell days. But that’s all this would be.
It’s not 1977 anymore. Football is on all the time, every day during the season. “MNF” will never be special enough as “appointment viewing” based on the “TV show” qualities again. That idea is antiquated. Because of the mass distribution of the sport, it’s just another one of thousands of football broadcasts you can see in a given year.
No negative commentary on Romo here. At all. Quite the contrary.
I simply don’t see the return on investment being worthwhile unless he is woven into the fabric of ESPN on a far greater level than only “MNF.”
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via X. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
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