According to Front Office Sports, Tony Romo is poised to get paid more per year to call football games than he ever made to play in them.
Romo, who made nearly $130 million playing in the NFL but never made more than $8.5 million in annual salary, will call at least one more game for CBS on Sunday when the Titans take on the Chiefs in Kansas City.
After that, the 39-year-old’s rookie contract with CBS — which is paying him about $4 million annually — is up and he’ll hit the free-agent market.
When he does, ESPN may make the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback the highest-paid sportscaster in TV history. With Monday Night Football having issues, the Worldwide Leader is prepping a multi-year deal that would pay Romo between $10 million to $14 million annually, sources told FOS.
During the early 1990s, John Madden made $8 million a year to provide analysis on NFL games. Former Dallas Cowboys QB Troy Aikman, Fox’s top NFL game analyst, makes around $7.5 million per year.
Were Romo to leave CBS for ESPN, he could replace Booger McFarland as the analyst in the MNF booth or assume an even larger role if ESPN’s parent company Disney was able to acquire a Sunday afternoon game package during the next round of NFL TV negotiations in 2020-2021.
In addition to the increase in salary, Romo may be interested in calling games on Monday nights so he’d be able to take part in PGA Tour events on Sunday without having a conflict.
If ESPN missed out on Romo, the network could try to woo Peyton Manning (again) or consider one of its top college football analysts as a replacement for McFarland.
Were they to retire, current NFL players Greg Olsen, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers and Larry Fitzgerald would all be potential options for the MNF booth.
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