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Much ado has been made of Tony Romo‘s NFL analysis on CBS this season.
There was a time in the recent past when Romo’s analysis was the best some fans had ever seen. Those days appear to be gone and Colin Cowherd has an interesting theory to explain the precipitous decline: Tony Romo’s obsession with golf.
Cowherd’s executive producer and co-host of The Paulie and Tony Fusco Show, Andrew Samson, pointed me in the direction of Colin’s clip where he talks about how an obsession with golf is associated with losing interest in work over long periods of time.
Colin Cowherd tells a story about how when interviewing employees he asks them if candidates if they love golf.
Cowherd said “I’ve used this for years when I would interview people and I was going to hire them. If I had lunch or coffee with them, I always asked them if they loved golf. ‘Oh, I love golf. Do you love golf?’”
Adding “And if they said yes, I wouldn’t hire them. Because I always had this theory that as guys age, many of them get addicted to golf. They’re on PGATour.com. They’re putting in the backyard. They’re thinking about it at work. They’re scheduling a trip to Scotland and they lose sight of their other job.”
Colin Cowherd Believes Tony Romo’s Golf Obsession Is The Issue
Here is Colin Cowherd on the ‘Tony Romo Golf Theory’ that he believes explains why Romo’s quality of analysis has declined despite being paid $17 million/season.
I’d hope that this isn’t black-and-white litmus test for Colin Cowherd. There obviously has to be some nuance involved here. Because the same could be said about food, traveling, NFL, soccer, etc.
Being a golfer who is consumed by the sport is no more disruptive than being someone who is completely and utterly obsessed with catching foul balls or home runs.
Tony Romo is a +1.6 handicapper. He averages 1.6 strokes under par every time he hits the course, with the differential factored in.
Here is a look at some recent scores from Tony Romo in Wisconsin. His best round was a 64 and his worst was a 78 (twice).
I, too, would be obsessed with golf if there was any possibility I could go out and shoot a 64. But there is also no indication that it’s golf that is cauasing Tony Romo’s NFL analysis to decline. For now, it’s just a great theory from Colin Cowherd.
If it does turn out to be golf that’s causing Romo’s analysis to suffer, he is getting paid tens of millions. With that much money it wouldn’t be hard at all to hire a full team to do game prep on the golf course. He could easily set up a mobile office every time he gets in a round of golf.
CBS Responsd To ‘Intervention’ Report About Tony Romo
The decline in Tony Romo’s analysis became a huge story this week. Chatter exploded after rumors surfaced that CBS had staged an ‘intervention’ about his slipping performance.
CBS attempted to get out in front of those rumors by releasing a statement. CBS Sports spokeswoman Jen Sabatelle told Andrew Marchand “To call this an intervention is a complete mischaracterization, we meet regularly with our on-air talent.”
The NYPost’s Andrew Marchand explained the situation as a CBS executive “reviewed tapes with Romo, went to dinner and discussed the broadcast in an attempt to return him to the form that made him a media sensation in his first three years on air, beginning in 2017, and culminated in what was at the time the largest contract in sportscasting history, a 10-year deal for a total of $180 million.”
Everyone has off days but when your job is to call less than 20 games a year, it sure seems like that’s something that can easily be prepared for when you’re being paid nearly $200 million for that work.