Romo wasn't built in a day

He never played in a Super Bowl, although he did broadcast one. And now Tony Romo, who as a Dallas Cowboys quarterback rang up the highest passer rating of any qb not to play in the Big Game, is making super money.

You'll recall being told that if you work hard enough and display enough skill in your job, you'll be paid fairly. Tony would agree with that!

If you follow pro football, you know the drill. Aging players retire and move into an analyst job with a TV network, but most of them sit there, watching the game, and muttering things such as:

• "They have to establish the running game"
• "They need to air it out with long passes"
• "The (insert name of team) just need to go out and play (insert name of team) football"
• "Time for the hurry-up offense"
• "You've got to make that catch"

And several thousand more.

So when Tony Romo retired from the Cowboys after the 2016 season, he got a new job as an analyst with CBS, but it was interesting that he moved right into the top spot, working with the lead team on CBS doing the biggest games every Sunday, with Jim Nantz as the play-by-play guy. Phil Simms had been doing that job, but it seemed that he was sound asleep by the third quarter of most games, so he was moved to the "NFL Today" pregame show and here came Tony.

And it says here that even though he was far from the greatest player in NFL history, he is the best color analyst ever.  Most people used to think that John Madden was the best, but his over-reliance on constantly mentioning players with interesting nicknames ("look at that path Jumbo Elliott cleared for him to run!") and onomatopoeia ("and then, BOOM!") seemed trite and dated when Romo came along and did so well, and he does well for one reason...

He analyzes the games.

As a former quarterback, he is used to looking at the formations of the defense and offense on the field, and therefore, he can predict - quite uncannily - what's going to happen in the next few seconds. If the defense is going to blitz, Tony tells you so. If the quarterback is going to run a sneak, he can feel it in his aching bones and he will tell you!

Plus, he has a sense of humor that places NFL football in the proper perspective, enough sense of history to talk about past players without becoming one of those "Back in MY day..." guys, and, as the Washington POST put it, he's "spontaneous in the booth, joyous and free-wheeling."

“There’s no plan of doing it at all,” Romo says. “Sometimes you just get passionate and you get excited and in the moment you start, you know, just really talking out loud what’s going through your brain. Sometimes you see a lot of stuff and then you just try and articulate that to the people who are watching.”

And his partner Nantz, who is often quite in awe of Romo's analysis, says, “This is the testament to years and years of his work and preparation. He’s not guessing. He’s not getting some sort of message from the gods.”

And the wonderful thing about being so good at his job is the financial reward. As a football player for 14 years, Tony made $127,422,458.

This past year, he pitched another $4 million on that pile, and his contract was up. CBS had the right to match any offer he received from another network, and when ESPN came up with $14 million a year to do Monday Night Football, the CBS eye saw that and raised the pot to $17 million a year for the next five years.

For the rest of us living here in Palookaville, that seems like quite a large amount of money. But when you're that good, you're that good!