Media Circus: Tony Romo on how he preps for a broadcast, Jason Witten's performance, more notes

NEW YORK — The first time Jim Nantz and Tony Romo shared a broadcast booth together was May 17, 2017. The setting wasn’t Gillette Stadium, Heinz Field or any other football edifice. It was a sound booth on the second floor of the CBS Broadcast Studios on West 57th Street in Manhattan. After NFL producer Jim Rikhoff popped in a tape of a game Nantz and Phil Simms had called the previous year — a 35-32 Oakland win over Carolina — Nantz and Romo called the game again off a monitor.

“The first quarter went along pretty smoothly,” Nantz recalled earlier this month in New York. “We did it for real except you don’t know when the replays are coming, you don’t have the producer cueing up graphics, and there is a bit of lag time for some of the replays. But Tony picked up on it quickly. By the time we were in the fourth quarter, I really thought Tony was good enough to be on the air on that first day.”

As we all know now, Romo’s actual broadcast debut for CBS Sports— a 26-16 Raiders’ win over the Titans on Sept. 10, 2017, in Nashville — could not have gone better. There was an overwhelmingly positive reaction to Romo’s work both internally at CBS, and externally on social media and elsewhere. CBS Sports execs were particularly surprised (and very happy) to see employees of competing NFL rights-holders praise Romo’s work. Seventeen months later, upon the conclusion of this year’s conference championship games, few would blink if you publicly declared Romo as the NFL’s best television analyst. He will call his first Super Bowl (along with Nantz, Tracy Wolfson and rules analyst Gene Steratore) on Feb. 3 in Atlanta.

I recently sat down with Romo in New York City for a one-one-interview on a number of subjects. Some news: He was contacted earlier this season, and twice in the offseason, to see if he would consider returning to playing.

I have always been fascinated by what analysts think about in the seconds before game action. What are you looking at five seconds before the snap of the football and then the moment we see the snap go to the quarterback?

It varies situationally and it is really no different than a quarterback at the line of scrimmage in many ways. For instance, you have a plan going into the game on 3rd-and-3s. That is far different than a 3rd-and-10. So, on a 3rd-and-3, I am looking at certain things, and for a 3rd-and-10 I am looking for other things. Those are keys for what a defense is trying to do, what the defense is trying to take away, and the matchups on the field. In some ways, everything is about protection. This is a protection league at its core so you think to yourself: “Okay, if I was the quarterback, how could they possibly breakdown my protection?” That is almost the number one thing you go through. You already know the play because it is your play and you have done the reps for the play 1000 times so you are not thinking about your play. It is all about them.

When you are up in the booth, it is the same thing. I’m thinking, “How is this going to be broken down, or could it be broken down and what would I do if I was right there at the quarterback position?” From there I analyze the possibilities and you do the permutations of what could possibly come about. The next thing you are looking at would be coverage-based stuff, the linemen on defense, who is covering who, matchups, whether things are man or zone. It is hard to give you one thing because on one specific play so much can happen. For instance, you might have (Chargers defensive end) Melvin Ingram lined up inside and they are trying to get a matchup on a guard. So I might want to circle that. Or I see Rob Gronkowski on a safety one-on-one.

You are doing this all in real-time?

Yes, those are the seconds from the huddle to the snap.

I know you have said you want to keep working to improve your craft as a sports broadcaster. But at a base level, this has worked for you. Why has broadcasting worked for you so far?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I do think in some ways I have studied the game for 20 years and, at my core, I have tried to improve and get better at football. I think that has really helped me do this job, where I just know a lot of stuff that I have thought about over the years. It gives you a history. If you study a new language, you are just better at it 20 years later than you are year one. So, I have a lot of things to draw back on that have happened within games, or that I have thought about after a game that we should have done better. It is fun for me to get beneath football. As far as the broadcasting aspect of it, I think at the core it is nothing more than my ability to get you the viewer to care about this play, this game, and why is this important. Why is this really special with this coach schematically? Why did this quarterback protect this play? It’s like, can I get you to care about my story of my buddy who was drinking the other night? Do you care about the story I am about to tell? You are trying to get people to care about things.

Has broadcasting either in part or in full replaced the same feeling you got playing professionally?

It is different. It is almost a fight or flight feeling when you are playing. Your body is literally being laid on the line every week. It’s like I know there is a good chance I am going to take a beating this week and you know that going in and that is a very unique thing that is almost separate to anything else you do in life. No other sport is like that. Other sports you are always excited going into playing and maybe there are some nerves and butterflies, which is normal. But with football, you know you are going in and you can get hurt. I think that is where it is different and nothing will ever give you that thing because you just know it is just different. I still get a little nervous before broadcasting games which is good because it means you care and that it is important to you.

But I think postgame is the biggest difference. Now, I get on a plane and I am decompressing. After (playing) in a football game, I would be up until 4 a.m. doing every play in my mind, watching and re-watching the game before I got to the facility the next day. I would be upset or super happy about how something was executed. If you win, you go home and it is like the greatest two or three hours with your family. If you lose, it is a morgue.

You are 38 years old, younger than some of the quarterbacks playing in the National Football League. When was the last time someone contacted you with a legitimate offer to play?

There are legitimate contract offers and there are, “Hey, what are you thinking?” (laughs).

You can make the determination as to what you would consider a semi-legit offer.

There was something earlier this season and definitely two times this offseason. Usually, it is a coach that reaches out.

On that note: You have always had interests away from broadcasting — golf, coaching etc… Now that you have been broadcasting for two seasons, has your long-term outlook or interest in broadcasting been modified or changed?

I think in some ways you are always evaluating everything but at the same time, I envision probably doing this a long time. It would be a shock to me for me to think, “Okay, I am done” tomorrow. At the same time, you cannot predict how life goes. But I do know I am happy, this is comfortable, and working with Jim Nantz and our team has been terrific.

How do you anticipate you will be feeling 20 minutes before your first Super Bowl broadcast?

I think the biggest thing is you have to own it. When you have a big moment, you have to know coming in that you want to dominate this thing. You want to walk in there like you are Robert Redford in “The Natural.” The AFC title game last year was great because that was our big game and the feeling was, “Let’s go, this is going to be fun.” Last year I was like, “I know these teams and we are going to be all right.” So that is the feeling I am going to go into the Super Bowl with.

One of things you told me last year was you were contemplating where to show your sense of humor on-air or more of your personality during broadcasts. It feels like that you decided to go for that a little more this year. How have you felt that has worked?

If you get a game that is 30-28 and it comes down to the last drive, we don’t need humor. But if the game isn’t really that great of a game, I want to laugh. I don’t want to go to a luncheon and be bored. I want to laugh a little bit. You just want to start to create something better for someone at home who is sitting there bored. I think football uniquely makes it fun at all times but there are times when one team is either blowing out the other or one team is stale that day and that has freed me up to try more stuff in that regard. Sometimes, it just happens and I go with it.

Is there a sequence this year within a game where you thought to yourself: This is the level of broadcasting I want to be at for all games?

I don’t think there is anything I would describe as a perfect play if that makes sense. Nothing comes right to my head. I feel if there was one it would. I don’t necessarily think it is just us. I really think the game dictates so much of that. You asked me about the difference from Year 1 to Year 2 and I added humor and some other things, but the game has to come to you. I think what happens sometimes is people have all this stuff they want to put into the game and they get so prepared to get this stuff into the game. Hopefully, I don’t have to use all that stuff and that’s a different way of thinking because I just want to talk about everything that is cool in this game. But then sometimes something happens in the game and you have a graphic and the graphic really works. So there are times where the game calls itself and the unique thing this year is that the games have told the story.

You dealt with scrutiny as the Cowboys quarterback. How would you compare the scrutiny of being a National Football League quarterback to a top NFL analyst at a network?

There are some parallels but I think they are different planets a little bit in the sense of in football it is quantifiable. One, you lost. Or you threw for 50 touchdowns and five picks and you won that season as far as being a good player. In the broadcast booth, it is very subjective. When I came to CBS I thought, “Well, how do you evaluate this?” Is it just your boss? What I have found it is a little bit of everything. It is a little bit of what the world says, a little bit of social media, a little bit about what your boss thinks. It’s about someone talking to your buddy across the street. So it is different when it comes to the evaluation of it. I would also argue that the broadcasting side of it isn’t necessarily having tougher skin because you do have to have that to be a quarterback. But everyone cannot like you. It is impossible. If you trying for that, it is unattainable. Why? People like different personalities, different things. So you almost have to just be yourself. If 20 percent or 50 percent or 80 percent of the audience likes you, that is kind of it. The goal needs for you to keep getting better at your craft. There is not winning and losing and trying to quantify it next week. It is about getting better, and if I am not good at something, let me go work at this on my own and turn this weakness into a strength. That becomes who you are over time. Otherwise, I think you lose the core essence of what makes you good and the reason you have the job in the first place. The ultimate goal is to be the best version of yourself.

So we just talked about the impossibility of being uniformly liked in sports broadcasting. Your former teammate and friend, Jason Witten, has seen his share of criticism this season, something you mostly avoided your first year at CBS. What are your observations from afar on how people have discussed and written about Witten’s first year in the Monday Night Football booth?

The one thing I talked to Jason about before the season was that the start of this (broadcasting) will determine a lot. If you get off to a really good start, it is kind of like being a rookie in the NFL. If you have a great rookie season, you can almost have two bad years but you are still that guy who had that great rookie year. It takes a long time for people to change their perspective on you. If you come out and are not very good in the NFL or you struggled for two years or something, it takes years to change that perspective of you. If you win the Super Bowl in your first year at quarterback, you could play five average years but you are still kind of that guy. So to me, if you get off to a great start (in broadcasting), you can try things and stumble a bit but it is okay because the majority of people like you. But if you get off to a rough start, it just piles up and everything starts to get nitpicked.

I think in some ways Jason has really improved as the year has gone on. I think he got off to a little bit of a rough start in a new industry that he had never been a part of and I think he has done a really good job to improve. I think he’s starting to enjoy this and starting to get this thing down.

CBS Sports has been clear that for the moment they will not be discussing gambling information during a broadcast. Your boss, Sean McManus, said he will evaluate that heading forward. Philosophically, as someone who broadcasts games, should that kind of content be part of a game broadcast?

To be honest with you, I don’t care. It is like one of those things for me where it will be if you want to talk about it, fine. If you don’t, fine. I don’t have any emotional pull either way.

How often do you watch your broadcasts, and if you do, how do you re-watch them?

I did so many practice games to get to what I felt like I wanted to do. I was searching for a tone and at times I would be way over the top. But I discovered the perfect tone is the same as when I am excited at dinner or having a beer and telling my wife or buddies, “Oh, my Gosh, listen to what happened to me today.” So that is how I go about it on air. I trust my instincts, and sometimes your instincts might be wrong but over time they are usually pretty good. When I go back and watch myself on air, I try and evaluate whether I made a conscious decision to do something beforehand or if it was just instinctive. Because if I let the game call itself and just use my instincts, it is usually pretty close to what I would like it to be. It is usually when you are trying to do too much, trying to fit stuff in, trying to do more, you realize that less is more there. I will pick different parts of the game to watch when I re-watch a game. During the game, I will also make a note to myself at that time where I want to go back and evaluate that.

What do you hope viewers take away from a game you and Jim have called?

I like being around fun people and when I say fun, people who care about each other. And I think that comes across with us. If people don’t like each other, I think viewers feel that instantly. We are on-air together for three-and-a-half hours and it is going to show through a fake laugh or something else. It is so obvious. Sometimes, Jim and I will get cheesy and I’ll say, “Jim, we are getting cheesy now!” I want you to enjoy being around us because I am around people who enjoy life and enjoy being around each other. Jim and I want to come across like we enjoy each other, we enjoy our time together, we enjoy this game, and hopefully, you leave us feeling that way too.

The Ink Report

1. In the most important sequence of the NFC Championship Game between the Rams and Saints, I thought Fox NFL analyst Troy Aikman and rules analyst Mike Pereira were excellent stating without hesitation that Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman had committed pass interference on Tommylee Lewis. You may think it was an obvious call and that’s the job of the broadcast team, but it doesn’t always happen that way.

First, lead announcer Joe Buck immediately said “no flag” in real-time to highlight the severity. That was followed by an immediate replay from producer Richie Zyontz that showed it was a penalty as well as director Rich Russo getting a shot of an apoplectic Saints coach Sean Payton. Aikman then said very quickly, “that should be a penalty and Sean Payton is justifiably upset.” Buck then asked Pereira if he thought it was a penalty: “Yeah, I really do,” Pereira said. “I know it is easy in slow-motion, they are close to bang-bang, but that was early enough for even high contact on the receiver.” Pereira was followed by three more replays of the play, with Aikman adding the coda. “It can’t be any more obvious than that.” Excellent work.

1a. I’ve written a lot about Romo over the last two years — I write this sentence in the middle of a piece featuring a 3,000 word Q&A with Romo —but how can you not note just how remarkable he was on in the fourth quarter and overtime of New England’s 37-31 win over Kansas City. His ability pre-snap to diagnose where Tom Brady was throwing was extraordinary. His enthusiasm was off-the-charts great (“Oh my gosh, Jim, Tom Brady has the ball at the 35 to go to the Super Bowl!”) He was terrific on a day with more people watching than in any other game he has broadcast.

A couple of quick examples: On a 3rd-and-5 with 54 seconds left in regulation and New England driving for a go-ahead score, Romo telegraphed Brady to Rob Gronkowski on the left sideline if Gronkowski did not face a double coverage by a Chiefs safety. (He did not.) In overtime, Romo recognized New England wideout Julian Edelman’s route before it happened (“You gotta chip with him, chip with him, and throw to Edelman over the middle of the field”) as well as Brady finding Gronkowski for 15 yards on the left sideline on a massive 3rd and 10 that advanced New England to the Kansas City 15. Said Romo: “Gronk is out wide. Watch the top of your screen. Watch the safety. If he comes down, there is a good chance he is throwing there.”

You want to be at your best for the biggest games and Romo was that.

1b. I asked four sports media members who focus on sports viewership —Austin Karp of Sports Business Daily; Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch; Douglas Pucci of Programming Insider and Awful Announcing; and Robert Seidman of Sports TV Ratings.com — for a Super Bowl viewership prediction for Rams-Patriots on Feb. 3. The current Super Bowl viewership record is 114.4 million viewers in 2015 for Super Bowl XLIX (Patriots-Seahawks).

Karp: I’m going to go ahead and predict that Super Bowl viewership will be reflective of the regular season – the audience will climb from the year prior, but not quite get to the levels of a few years ago. So, with last year being at 103.3 million for Eagles-Patriots, and two years ago being 111.3 million viewers for Patriots-Falcons, I’d figure around 106.5 million for Patriots-Rams.

Lewis: You have two top ten television markets with Patriots-Rams, but I think this was the least compelling of the four possibilities. Patriots-Saints is the HOF quarterback matchup, Chiefs-Rams is the matchup of young stars, Chiefs-Saints pits the two best teams in the league. With Patriots-Rams, there’s no real hook, except the rematch aspect (which is a real stretch considering the Rams were in another city when they last met). I think you see an increase from last year, but not the kind of jump that was possible. I say 107.8 million.

Pucci: 105 million.Super Bowl LIII will continue the increased ratings from last year’s playoffs but fatigue from yet another appearance by the Patriots — an all-time great franchise but unlikable outside of New England — will stifle the number to a minimal rise from the 103.4M of last year.

Seidman: Prediction: 108 million viewers. The NFL’s best TV ratings might be in the rear-view mirror but the Super Bowl is still the only live event in the USA that can draw more than 100 million people to their TVs to watch the same thing at the same time. 108 million viewers is six million-plus viewers off the record, but it’s up nearly 5 million viewers from last year’s Eagles-Pats. Maybe the Saints-Patriots would’ve done slightly better, but I find the gap between the averages for the conference championships and the Super Bowl (~50 million for discussion purposes) very interesting — the ~50 million don’t care who’s playing in the Super Bowl.

2. Episode 36 of the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch features a conversation with Sports Business Daily media writer John Ourand. In this podcast, we discuss the potential viewership for this year’s Super Bowl in Atlanta; ESPN’s interest in getting a Super Bowl game in the future and the potential cost to get in that rotation; what kind of Super Bowl broadcast ESPN/ABC might put on; ESPN’s NFL j0urnalism; Ourand’s story on the Big 12 conference shopping the 2019, 2021 and 2023 championship games to media companies; Endeavor move into streaming; the latest on Disney’s sale of the RSNs; the Monday Night Football booth for 2019; whether the Wizards should trade Bradley Beal to the Raptors for Pascal Siakam and O.G. Anunoby, and much more.

You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and more.

3. In April 2017, a few months after she arrived at ESPN, investigative and enterprise reporter Tisha Thompson started working on a piece on why Super Bowl tickets are so expensive, who controls the inventory and movement of the tickets, and perhaps most importantly, how some NFL fans promised Super Bowl tickets after payment never get them. Her reporting, along with producer Arty Berko, ran on Sunday on both ESPN and E:60 under the header of “How the wild world of Super Bowl ticket brokering can burn regular fans.” I exchanged an email with Thompson on Saturday to get some background on an interesting piece.

How long did this piece take to the report from conception to completion —and what was the origin of the story idea?

We started talking about it in earnest in April of 2017, a few months after I arrived at ESPN. Fans get so frustrated about tickets – how expensive they are, the feeling they’re getting ripped off and how they can’t get the seats they really want. There’s also so much misinformation and mystery surrounding the sports ticketing industry – we’ve discovered in the last two years that there are a lot of seemingly simple questions about tickets that sometimes produce very complicated answers. So, our team started researching different angles and storylines, always keeping the fan in mind by asking the question, “How will this story benefit the average fan?” But it’s a tricky thing, because when it comes to ticketing, there’s two very different audiences at ESPN — people who only buy tickets occasionally and don’t really know much about the business versus the guy who knows a lot about ticketing. We tried to give them both something to chew on by keeping it simple for the novices but offering new, detailed information for the experienced ticketing buyers.  

One of the first things we did was gather documents by sending out public information act requests to the Federal Trade Commission and every state attorney general allowed to release consumer complaints. Rather than work on assumptions and anecdotes, we wanted real data about what angered fans enough about tickets to file a legal complaint. We ended up with hundreds of complaints from all over the country, which then highlighted some obvious stories we should pursue. By far and away, fans lost the largest amount of money from speculative ticket sales relating to the Super Bowl – in large part because the tickets are so expensive. SBTickets customers alone lost more than a million dollars buying tickets they never received.

Once we had all the complaints in house, we started shooting the story about a year ago when we followed ticket broker Mike Lipman around the day before the Super Bowl in Minnesota. We then spent the following months identifying fans who lost money in the 2015 Super Bowl, tracking the complex legal history surrounding Paul Jones and his company SBTickets, and interviewing folks like Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who is one of the few to take legal action resulting from ticketing complaints. All the while, we’ve also been gathering interviews and working on future stories relating to other, different issues in the sports ticketing industry.

Why did you think it was an important story?

My professional mantra has always been to pursue stories that help people be a little safer and smarter. I really do want to help folks out by giving them all the information we can gather so they can then make their own independent decisions on how to best protect themselves. It doesn’t matter which team you love, what sport you follow or where you live — ticketing is the rare universal sports story that pretty much everyone wants to know more about. They want to know how to save money but get the best seats. They want to know how not to get ripped off. They just want to know why it is the way it is — and does it really need to be that way? Mix in the fact it is the Super Bowl — the most-watched sporting event every year — and it’s kind of a no-brainer. People care. 

I think many NFL fans will find it revealing regarding your reporting on the players and NFL staffers that sell their Super Bowl tickets to brokers.  What calculus did ESPN use regarding naming anyone from the league who sold their SB ticket, knowing that it wasn’t the central news to this piece?

No calculus at all. Mike Lipman, the ticket broker who showed us how he obtains the hardest-to-get tickets, was very upfront with us. He would let us follow him around and he would answer all our questions except one — under no circumstances would he tell us the names of his ticket sources. That’s his trade secret. Knowing which players are willing to sell is how he makes his money and he’s spent years cultivating them as sources. Our crew followed him from at least 9 a.m. that day until late into the night. The only time he wouldn’t let us follow him was when he went to the Starbucks to meet the players who sold him some tickets and party passes. If I remember correctly, he was gone for about 20 minutes. Would we have loved to know who he met? You bet! We always want to get as much information as we can. But he wasn’t going to budge on that and in the long run we learned so much that ended up being so much more valuable to the story and the average fan. As you point out, the names weren’t central to the piece. Instead, using the knowledge we gained from talking to Lipman and other sources, we were able to ask informed, pointed questions of the NFL, which in turn prompted interesting answers, including the fact the NFL hasn’t punished any players for reselling their tickets and there’s no language on the back of the ticket prohibiting its resale.

3a. Many tennis fans on Saturday night were understandably upset about ESPN opting to show Rafa Nadal’s blowout of Thomas Berydch during its Australian Open coverage over 20-year-old American Francis Tiafoe’s thrilling win over Gregor Dimitrov. It was a frustrating decision for those who pay money for ESPN/ESPN2 but who do not have ESPN+. Credit tennis caller Chris Fowler for explaining why it happened when asked about it on Twitter. Fowler said the match was held on a court (Melbourne Arena) that had been pre-designated as a broadband court for ESPN+. For a more detailed explanation, I emailed ESPN PR’s tennis spokesperson in Melbourne who said they went to the Tiafoe match at times but that Nadal-Berydch was the feature match on ESPN2 and they were “constrained earlier by Maria Sharapova-Ash Barty on ESPN2” (which appeared prior to the Nadal match).

4. Sports pieces of note:

• Stunning piece from Alan Shipnuck of Golf.com: The murder of Celia BarquÍn Arozamena was unbearable, but the deeper you dig, the more tragic it gets.
• Via Candace Buckner of The Washington Post: Why NBA players love pedicures.
• From Ben Collins of Slam: How Two Murderers Were Spotted on an Old Mark Jackson Trading Card.
• From Bruce Feldman of The Athletic: The story of Alabama football’s rampant coaching staff turnover.
• New York Times writer, Ken Belson on the NFL and post-playing obesity.
• From Jeff Howe of The Athletic: The inside story of how, 25 years ago, Robert Kraft improbably bought the Patriots.
• Via Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wade: For the NFL and all of football, a new threat: an evaporating insurance market.
• From Blake Richardson of the L.A. Times: UCLA’s Katelyn Ohashi rediscovers her joy of gymnastics and becomes an internet sensation.
• Terrific thread on Andy Murray from Bryan Graham of The Guardian.
• Via Dom Cosentino of Deadspin: Can Los Angeles Ever Love The Chargers?
• LaVida Baseball interviewed New York Times writer James Wagner, who writes at the intersection of Latino culture and baseball.

Non-sports pieces of note:

• Tremendous project from The Boston Globe. The newspaper tracked down Boston high school valedictorians a decade-plus after they graduated. Read this from Malcolm Gay, Eric Moskowitz, and Meghan E. Iron. 
• Locked in a prison in France for stealing $100 million in art, a thief sent New Yorker writer Jake Halpern 20 letters over 18 months telling me his story. I found this piece totally enthralling.
• Via Patti Davis, for The Washington Post: Trump’s agents are willing to take a bullet for him. How can he treat them so flippantly? 
• From Emily Foxhall of Houston Chronicle: A plea from Port Arthur.
• A notable Q&A with Conan O’Brien.
• For The Atlantic: What People Actually Say Before They Die. By Michael Erard.
• How a Career Criminal Broke the Convict Code and Saved Himself. By Alan Prendergast for Westword.com.
• The Washington Post obit on Tony Mendez, ‘Argo’ spy who smuggled U.S. hostages out of Iran during crisis.
• Via Trymaine Lee, for The New York Times: My heart attack at 38.
• Sad story from The Washington Post: Suicides among veterinarians become a growing problem.

(Top photo: Mark Goldman / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)