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Romo’s Retirement Already Polarizing Social Media and Talk Radio

By Ben Davila

Oct 13, 2013; Arlington, TX, USA; Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo (9) throws a pass in the fourth quarter of the game against the Washington Redskins at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports
Oct 13, 2013; Arlington, TX, USA; Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo (9) throws a pass in the fourth quarter of the game against the Washington Redskins at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports /
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Former Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback Tony Romo retired yesterday. The friendly confines of the broadcast booth await. Unsurprisingly, people already have opinions.

Due to pure coincidence, I had the day off yesterday. This allowed two things. For one, I got to sleep in, which is always glorious. Second, I was able to keep up with local sports talk radio. Granted, it was local titan KTCK, aka The Ticket. But even then, the opportunity to listen them uninterrupted is something I am rarely afforded.

Somewhere around mid-morning, the news finally came down: Long time quarterback Tony Romo announced his retirement. While the news wasn’t surprising, it signaled the shift of a longstanding local paradigm.

What hasn’t shifted is how quickly people seemed to pick sides. Of course, the retirement came with other news. The next step in Romo’s career will be as the color analyst alongside Jim Nantz on CBS. To some, this seems like colossal jump. He’s going from the field straight into the A-Team booth. Further muddying those waters is his displacement of longtime analyst Phil Simms.

To be sure, the line of demarcation seemed to follow the same one that dogged him during his playing days. You either thought he was awesome or he sucked. Similarly, as the news made its way across the airwaves and social media, I heard and saw reactions that mirrored opinions of his play.

And if I’m being completely honest with everyone, I have to say that the naysayers need to tap the brakes a bit. As far as quarterbacks go, you could do a lot worse than Tony Romo. The numbers don’t lie: fourth in career passer rating, tied for fifth in career completion percentage, tied for fourteenth in career fourth quarter comebacks. Go ahead, look. Especially take a look at the comeback list. That, my friends, is a murderers’ row of NFL quarterback royalty.

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Of course, this doesn’t mean anything to the haters. They saw the botched snap in Seattle, the 44-6 debacle in a win-and-in game in Philly (both of which are detailed here), the pick six in PIttsburgh in 2008, and that’s all they remember. They don’t need anything else. They’re the judges, juries, and executioners of his legacy. He sucks. That’s all there is to it.

Well, with any good hate, you can rest assured it is all based in jealousy. By any reasonable metric, Tony Romo had a very enviable career. Dated starlets? Check. Put up monster numbers on mediocre teams? Check.

The only rub–and it’s admittedly big–is that pesky lack of a championship. But even then, the list of Hall Of Famers without championships on their pedigree is long enough to render the Romo hate ineffectual. They guy wildly outperformed the most realistic expectations by miles and miles.

For this reason, it’s probably a bit foolish to underestimate the guy’s abilities in the broadcast booth. We all saw how seriously he took the task of preparing for games and seasons. There’s no reason to think he won’t take his broadcasting duties equally as seriously. Plus, as a CBS man, it will provide a natural segue into golf. As an avid ham-and-egger at the local links, I can get behind this. Hell, I’d like to see Romo suit it up for this weekend’s Masters.

Next: Cowboys: Salary Cap and Roster Implications of Romo Retirement

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In short, I’m in the Tony-will-be-fine camp. If there is a learning curve, it will not be steep. The guy is too smart and has worked too hard to be denied at this time in his life. He has already overcome too much. The booth will be child’s play, especially in comparison to running for his life for sixteen weeks in the fall and winter. Cool your jets, haters. You’ll keep receiving your weekly snoot full of Romo’s grinning, beady-eyed mug.

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