ATLANTA — The day after the AFC championship game, Tony Romo entertained a prediction request from baseball star Bryce Harper with a wink and a…
ATLANTA — The day after the AFC championship game, Tony Romo entertained a prediction request from baseball star Bryce Harper with a wink and a nod on Twitter.
“Well… looks like you’ll be playing for the Texas @Rangers opening day,” Romo wrote in response to Harper asking him where the free agent right fielder was going to sign.
But eight days later, it was obvious the joke had worn a bit thin with Romo, whose uncanny ability to call out the plays Tom Brady was running in the final few minutes against the Kansas City Chiefs lifted him from new football broadcasting star to a legitimate storyline going into Super Bowl LIII.
Just like that, “Hey Tony, who’s going to win the game?” became a far more annoying, “Hey Tony, what exact play is going to win the game?” which, given a few more days, could easily devolve into “Hey Tony, what am I having for dinner tonight?”
“I’ll keep playing my novelty act up here,” Romo said with a semi-sneer Tuesday when asked how Sunday’s game will end. “I’ll go 28-24 and the team that has the ball at the end has 24 and doesn’t score.”
For Romo, whose predictive powers as CBS’ lead color analyst have gotten a lot of attention during his two seasons in the booth, there’s obviously a fine line between the insightful and the ridiculous. He even acknowledged Tuesday he sort of toned down his playcalling predictions this season after he was criticized in some corners last season for, of all things, being too accurate.
“That’s an important part of his commentary, but he only does it a couple times a game,” CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said. “He did a lot of games this year where he didn’t do it at all.”
But it says something about Romo and CBS that just two years after his retirement from the Dallas Cowboys, he has become the biggest star in sports broadcasting because of his natural style on the microphone, his joyous enthusiasm for the games he’s calling and, yes, his ability to see what’s going to happen before the play unfolds.
