NEW YORK — The first time Jim Nantz and Tony Romo shared a broadcast booth together was May 17, 2017. The setting wasn’t Gillette Stadium, Heinz Field or any other football edifice. It was a sound booth on the second floor of the CBS Broadcast Studios on West 57th Street in Manhattan. After NFL producer Jim Rikhoff popped in a tape of a game Nantz and Phil Simms had called the previous year — a 35-32 Oakland win over Carolina — Nantz and Romo called the game again off a monitor.



“The first quarter went along pretty smoothly,” Nantz recalled earlier this month in New York. “We did it for real except you don’t know when the replays are coming, you don’t have the producer cueing up graphics, and there is a bit of lag time for some of the replays. But Tony picked up on it quickly. By the time we were in the fourth quarter, I really thought Tony was good enough to be on the air on that first day.”



As we...