About to conclude his seventh season in sports broadcasting, Tony Romo has developed a group of critics including football fans, media analysts, radio hosts, and ample comments on social media that have brought more hate than love the past few years.
On Thursday during a CBS NFL media call, Romo seemed to have enough of it and responded to those who have been after him in his role among the CBS NFL team since 2017.
“It’s a normal arc of someone’s career,” he said. “Honestly, I think a lot of people were rooting against [Patrick] Mahomes because he’s been there. They want to see people new.
“It’s just part of an arc when you do something at a very high level. I think that’s normal. Same thing happens in football. You become dominant at things and then all of a sudden people are like, ‘OK.’ Then at the end, Tiger Woods comes back and everyone roots for you. It’s just a normal arc of a career. It’s not abnormal. It’s absolutely what’s supposed to happen.”
Romo also mentioned that there is typically more criticism than praise on social media.
Therefore, it’s more difficult to truly gauge the way his favor lies within the sports space.
“If you liked our broadcast and you said, ‘Wow, I love Jim Nantz and Tony Romo,’ and you said that on there on your tweet, are you going to keep doing that every week, or would that make you look a little silly?” he said. “I think there’s far more people who I see every single day who come up and love our broadcast and our team and CBS and what we do, and I hear that and feel that. And you can feel it in life. There’s so many people that have said they love us.
“And so you’re going to have the negative aspects that come in from time to time, but those things are normal. That’s what’s supposed to happen through the arc. I’m telling you, there a lot of people who…if I went on there and sent a tweet out of ‘Hey, do you guys still like us?,’ I think you’d hear about it all over again.”
Romo seems to have also accumulated some critics within the CBS organization, per a report from Andrew Marchand, then with The Post, during his podcast last February that detailed an “intervention” was tried by company executives with the former Cowboys quarterback in the previous offseason.
Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS also told Marchand this October that he “emphasized the positive and some ways I thought he [Romo] could be better,” while making it known that it wasn’t a conversation out of the ordinary, as they have had similar conversation with other on-air talent.
However, CBS spokesperson Jen Sabatelle disputed the use of the word “intervention” and rather explained that the company meets “regularly with our on-air talent.”
Romo recently took some heat from fans for his call on Lamar Jackson catching a pass from himself during the AFC Championship.
He also has made multiple mistaken references to Taylor Swift being Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s wife and not his girlfriend.
Romo revealed on the call that the intention of it was to be a joke.
“Someone did that to me back in the day. … People come up to me all the time (asking), ‘What do you know?’ People love it and go crazy for it,” Romo said.
CBS is set to host the Super Bowl featuring the defending champion Chiefs and 49ers next week in Las Vegas.