Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy predicted CBS will never restore Tony Romo to its top NFL broadcast chair, calling the network's indefinite suspension a convenient exit from a $18-million-a-year deal gone stale.
Portnoy, appearing on FS1's Barstool Mornings, did not hold back about what he sees as a foregone conclusion. Romo, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback turned color analyst, was arrested last month on suspicion of operating while intoxicated in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. CBS responded with a one-sentence statement placing him on indefinite leave. The network has offered no further update on his future.
For Portnoy, the speed of CBS's decision told the whole story. The network had been paying Romo a reported $18 million a year, and had been fielding growing criticism of his on-air performance for several seasons. The OWI arrest, in Portnoy's telling, simply gave CBS the door it had been looking for.
Portnoy told FS1 viewers that CBS's response left no room for ambiguity:
"Duh, [CBS] wanted to get rid of Romo. This decision was made within 0.2 seconds of this incident happening, so they were clearly looking for an out, and Romo led them through the door."
He went further, framing the suspension as a performance decision dressed up in disciplinary clothing:
"[This is a] no-brainer: if they thought Romo was doing a good job and they wanted to keep him, Romo would keep his job... Guys have survived way more than this with no issue."
Portnoy's point carries a certain blunt logic. Networks have kept talent through worse scandals when the talent was worth the trouble. When a broadcaster pulling $18 million a year has drawn years of criticism for declining quality, a legal incident hands the front office a clean reason to move on.
"They wanted to get rid of him, no doubt," Portnoy said. He added that while Romo might remain at CBS in some diminished capacity, "I don't know what the legality of it is", the top analyst chair is gone for good. "He will never get that No. 1 chair back. Never."
The arrest itself happened on a Thursday night in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office arrest report shows Romo was stopped on Interstate 43 and performed poorly on field sobriety tests. He was booked and released, with a court appearance set for September 21.
Romo was in Wisconsin for the Wisconsin State Amateur golf tournament. The New York Post reported he was stopped driving southbound on I-43 around 8 p.m., near his hometown of Burlington. He finished the tournament 35-over par, not exactly a weekend to remember on any front.
Earlier that same Thursday, before the arrest, Romo had spoken to a local Milwaukee television station about his love of competitive golf.
"I'm competitive in both [golf and football], I'm just better at football. It's the challenge of it. It's as tough as you're gonna play."
Hours later, he was in the back of a squad car.
Just The News reported that a first OWI offense in Wisconsin is typically a civil offense, not a criminal charge. The expected penalty is a fine of $150 to $300. That legal reality makes CBS's swift, indefinite suspension all the more telling. A traffic-level civil infraction does not normally end a career, unless the employer was already looking for a reason.
Romo has not commented publicly on the charge. CBS has said nothing beyond its initial one-sentence announcement. The silence from both sides has only fed speculation that the separation is effectively permanent.
CBS is not waiting around. ESPN reported that former NFL defensive star JJ Watt will take Romo's spot in the broadcast booth on a short-term basis. The move signals that the network is already building its post-Romo future, even if it has not formally severed ties.
Romo's tenure as CBS's lead NFL analyst had been a high-profile experiment from the start. He joined the booth after retiring from the Cowboys and quickly earned attention for his enthusiastic, play-prediction style. But critics in recent seasons pointed to what they called laziness and a lack of development as a broadcaster, a sharp contrast to the $18 million price tag CBS was paying.
Portnoy's prediction may be brash, but it tracks with how networks operate. CBS locked itself into an enormous contract, watched the product decline, and then received a gift-wrapped exit ramp. The OWI arrest did not end Tony Romo's broadcast career because of what he did behind the wheel. It ended it, if Portnoy is right, because CBS had already decided the investment was not paying off.
When a $150 fine gives a billion-dollar network the excuse to walk away from an $18-million-a-year contract, the arrest is not the story. The performance was.
