CBS analyst Tony Romo arrested on suspicion of OWI in Wisconsin

Tony Romo was arrested Thursday night in Milwaukee on suspicion of operating while intoxicated, according to multiple Wisconsin news outlets.

Per an arrest-detention report obtained by FOX6 Milwaukee, Romo was taken into custody after performing poorly on standardized field sobriety tests. He was subsequently booked on a first-offense operating while intoxicated (OWI) charge and released. In Wisconsin, a first-offense OWI is generally treated as a civil violation rather than a criminal charge, per WAOW, and typically carries a fine between $150 and $300.

Romo, a Burlington, Wisconsin native, was reportedly in his home state for the Wisconsin Amateur Championship golf tournament, which ran Monday through Thursday in West Bend.

Awful Announcing reached out to CBS for comment and had not received a response as of this article’s publication. We will update this story if that changes.

Romo built his second career in the CBS booth alongside Jim Nantz, joining the network in 2017 and turning heads almost immediately with his ability to call plays before the snap, which earned him the nickname “Romostradamus.” CBS rewarded that early run with a 10-year, $180 million extension in 2020, making him the highest-paid analyst in television sports history at the time.

That early magic hasn’t held up the way CBS might have hoped, and the network has known it for years. Andrew Marchand first reported in 2023 that CBS staged what was described as an “intervention,” with then-chairman Sean McManus visiting Romo at home and lead producer Jim Rikhoff holding separate dinner meetings to review game footage and push him to improve his preparation, an unusually hands-on level of engagement for a top analyst. CBS itself disputed the “intervention” framing at the time, saying it regularly meets with its talent, though McManus later acknowledged giving Romo direct feedback. The criticism never fully went away, as Marchand said in January that Romo “doesn’t appear as if he does the homework,” adding that he and Nantz were “regressing” as a broadcast team, with an “uncle-nephew dynamic” where Romo cracks jokes, and Nantz tries to figure out what he’s talking about. Awful Announcing wrote in November 2025 that the predictive insight which once made Romo appointment viewing had largely given way to comedic bits and tangents mid-broadcast.

Romo has mostly downplayed the criticism publicly, though not entirely. He’s pointed to strong viewership numbers as evidence that his pairing with Nantz is still working, telling The Pat McAfee Show earlier this year that “it goes with the territory.” But he told The Ringer’s Cousin Sal Iacono in 2024 that some of it is “warranted,” adding, “maybe I should do these things, maybe they’re right in some ways.” As recently as earlier this month, he told Pardon My Take that nearly a decade removed from playing hadn’t required much adjustment on his part, saying “the game is not rocket science” and that he’s always thinking about what viewers at home actually want out of a broadcast.

Whatever the case’s outcome, this is now one more storyline CBS has to manage around its highest-paid analyst, arriving in the same offseason stretch that’s already seen his on-air performance questioned repeatedly. Formal charges have not yet been filed, and he’s due back in Milwaukee County court on Sept. 21.