Dave Portnoy on CBS sidelining Tony Romo: ‘He’ll never get his job back’

Since CBS made the surprise decision to place lead NFL analyst Tony Romo on indefinite leave last Friday following an OWI arrest in Wisconsin, many in the media have speculated that the decision was merely motivated by an albatross of a contract.

Romo makes $18 million per year calling NFL games for CBS, a landmark deal that completely reset the market for top NFL game analysts when it was signed in 2020. But now, as Romo’s quality has fallen behind other top game analysts in recent years, and with J.J. Watt waiting in the wings, CBS, many say, was handed a prime opportunity to make a change without necessarily admitting it was for performance-based reasons.

Count Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy among those people. On Monday’s episode of Wake Up Barstool, Portnoy predicted Romo will “never get his job back” after his indefinite leave.

“They wanted to get rid of him, no doubt. He’ll never get his job back… he will never get that No. 1 chair back, never.” – @stoolpresidente on CBS placing Tony Romo on leave pic.twitter.com/RbyaQHxzqw

— Wake Up Barstool (@wakeupbarstool) August 3, 2026

When asked his read on the situation, Portnoy said, “Duh, [CBS] wanted to get rid of Romo. This decision was made within 0.2 seconds of this incident happening, so they were clearly looking for an out, and Romo led them through the door. There’s no brainer, if they thought Romo was doing a good job and they wanted to keep him, Romo would keep his job… Guys have survived way more than this with no issue. They wanted to get rid of him, no doubt.”

Portnoy continued: “He’ll never get his job back. He may be at CBS because maybe, I don’t know what the legality of it is, but he will never get that No. 1 chair back. Never.”

CBS seems intent on at least giving Romo’s fill-in, J.J. Watt, a trial run with top play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz, as Awful Announcing confirmed last week that Watt will step in for Romo during his absence. If that goes well, it’s anyone’s guess what happens to Romo. It’d be difficult to see CBS swapping the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback back into the top booth if the Nantz-Watt pairing receives strong reviews. And it’d be equally difficult to see CBS paying an analyst in its secondary or tertiary booth an $18 million annual salary.

That’d leave Romo in the studio, à la Phil Simms, or outside the network entirely.

So far, CBS has been mum on Romo’s future, releasing only a one-sentence statement that he is sidelined indefinitely. Until the public gets some more clarity, this will continue to be a storyline throughout the early portion of the NFL season.