After months of anticipation, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo made his debut as a broadcaster on Sunday during CBS’ broadcast of the Tennessee Titans and Oakland Raiders, and it seems like he did great, at least according to the critics.
But before going on with his new career, Romo took an interesting approach to prepare himself, as Cousin Sal from the Jimmy Kimmel Show revealed during an interview on the Bill Simmons Podcast. The 37-year old former star played Madden to listen to the commentary at first, but things took a surprising turn when he started playing and beating some of the top players online.
“We were over at Romo’s house, Jimmy Kimmel and I, and he’s talking about broadcasting. It was this summer, and he showed us the Chiefs-Falcons game, where he was calling the game.
“That was the one where [Eric] Berry ran [a two-point conversion] back. He called that again to show us. I said, “You know what you should do, you should watch Madden and see what the play-by-play is. This way you can understand how to do your stuff better.”
Tony Romo’s going to be so good at this. pic.twitter.com/uCj4cxomJX
— Jack Fritz (@Jack_Fritz34) September 11, 2017
“He’s like, “That’s a great idea.” So he puts Madden on, and starts playing. So we ended up watching him play the whole afternoon, beating up on these 12-year-olds. Then Jimmy understands that he’s absolutely not listening to the commentary, And he’s like, “I know, but I’ve got to beat this guy.” And he was changing every play at the line, because he would understand what the defense is, and then he’d go for 13 yards on an offensive play. It was spectacular.”
If Romo can be as skilled in broadcasting as he is on the sticks, he may be sticking around the commentary business for quite a while.
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