Since retiring, former NFL defensive end J.J. Watt and his wife Kealia have been busy with other sports – they are current investors in the Burnley Football Club (F.C.).

Now, Watt has announced that he will join CBS Sports as a studio analyst for CBS Sports.

He will make his first appearance for the first week of the regular season on The NFL Today, according to CBS Sports President David Berson.

“I love the game too much to be away from it entirely. I’m very excited to be joining CBS Sports to contribute across all their NFL shows and platforms, including working alongside and learning from JB, Coach, Boomer, Phil, and Nate this fall,” Watt said in a statement. “Hopefully fans will enjoy the insights and knowledge I’ve gained over my 12 years in the NFL and if we’re lucky, we’ll share a few laughs along the way as well.”

But there was a chance Watt chose a different team when he was a free agent – he considered the Steelers during free agency in 2021. The older brother to outside linebacker T.J. Watt decided not to because the team was in the middle of working out a record-breaking contract extension with his little brother. A team with the three Watt brothers, including fullback Derek Watt, was certainly possible.

“They were on the list. It certainly would have been awesome to play with my brothers, but T.J. was also going through the contract situation there, so the last thing I wanted to do was come in and take any money away from his contract,” Watt said.

The now 34-year-old signed with the Arizona Cardinals, as he finished his career there the last two seasons, but dealt with multiple injuries that impacted his production.

Watt was a three-time AP Defensive Player of the Year and had 114 1/2 career sacks. He was the 11th overall pick in the 2011 draft by Houston and was the face of that defense for ten seasons. The former veteran defensive end will be a future NFL Hall of Famer and will also be inducted into the University of Wisconsin’s Hall of Fame this year. The 2017 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year is the only player in league history to record multiple seasons with at least 20 sacks.

For the three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year and five-time Pro Bowler, it seems his post-retirement will keep him occupied, as this could just be the beginning.

The Big Ten Conference announced Thursday morning that it had sold its broadcasting rights to Fox, NBC and ABC for approximately $1 billion per year.

The world of college sports grows more tumultuous by the day, and as players fight for pay and conferences balloon in size, the landmark broadcasting deal only serves to reiterate its massive popularity and raise the stakes even higher.

Starting in 2023, the Big Ten will operate similarly to the NFL and broadcast events on all three primetime networks. College football, in particular, will become especially valuable as the three networks compete for games in valuable Saturday time slots. After nearly three decades with ESPN, however, the conference’s new deal excludes Disney and its massive sports channel.

ESPN was not willing to meet the Big Ten’s requests and is instead focused on nurturing its relationship with the SEC and ACC.

Before this deal was arranged, the conference’s broadcasting rights were worth approximately $430 million. This seven-year deal worth at least $7 billion marks a massive increase in the Big Ten’s value. It also exacerbates existing disputes in college sports.

Since before NIL regulations were passed, college athletes have called for a cut of broadcasting revenue earned by their conferences. In a world where these athletes can now profit from their careers and reputations, a billion-dollar deal is sure to reignite such discussions.

Moreover, the recent decision by UCLA and USC to leave the Pac-12 and join the Big Ten becomes even more important, as those two schools were included in the deal despite their pending status. The addition of two more teams to the 14-team conference sparked a fiery debate among figures in college sports about the nature of “superconferences.”

This broadcasting deal demonstrates the potential profitability of such a large conference, arguably at the expense of competition.

Though the Big Ten has taken vehement stands on both of these issues, leaving athletes out of revenue considerations while advocating for further expansion, commissioner Kevin Warren was clearly unconcerned about the potential fallout while organizing the massive broadcasting deal.

“This provides some financial stability for our schools, and some organizational stability as well,” Warren said to Sports Illustrated. “It’s been fun and intellectually challenging. Now the real work begins.”

As athletes take the first step toward an income, conferences grow to massive sizes and networks vie for lucrative media arrangements, the world of college sports is changing as rapidly as it’s growing. It isn’t losing momentum either.

After 16 years at CBS, commentator and former professional golfer Sir Nick Faldo said farewell in his final broadcast at the 2022 Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Sunday. As a golfer, Faldo won the Masters and Open three times each, but his time in the booth proved just as memorable, bolstering his illustrious career in the sport even further.

Faldo was emotional during his final broadcast, breaking down and struggling to continue as he tried to thank CBS and the commentators next to him, Jim Nantz, Ian Baker-Finch and Frank Nobilo.

“I’m a single child and at 65 I found three brothers, thank you,” Faldo said.

Known for his witty commentary, Faldo immediately became a key member of the CBS commentary team after signing, replacing Larry Wadkins as the network’s lead analyst. During his final address, he reflected on the moment when he first heard about the opportunity.

“So I was on a boat in Ireland … They gave me a call and said, ‘How would you like to sit next to Jim Nantz?’ I literally fell out of the boat. I really did. That was 2006, and here we are, 16 years later.”

Nantz and Faldo worked closely when Faldo first moved to CBS after three years at ABC, and the renowned play-by-play announcer was the first to honor Faldo during the broadcast.

“You’ve been the best in the world twice, and that, my friend, is extraordinary,” Nantz said. “You did it with humor, humility and humanity. It’s fair to say you led a sea as a broadcaster. May the sands of time be very kind to you, my friend.’”

Before his days as an analyst, Faldo won the Masters in 1989, 1990 and 1996 and the Open in 1987, 1990 and 1992. He was named the European Tour Golfer of the Year three times and the PGA Golfer of the Year once, and in 2009, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to golf. He was the third golfer to receive the title. Over the course of his career, he was the top-ranked golfer on the Official World Golf Ranking for a total of 97 weeks.

Tony Romo has signed a $17 million per year deal with CBS that is said to be significantly longer than five years. This makes him the highest-paid analyst in television history.

Romo has made a name for himself in the broadcasting world. After retiring from a 14-season run with the Dallas Cowboys in 2017, he joined CBS and quickly gained popularity with his analysis, ability to predict offensive plays pre-snap and his on-air partnership with lead CBS commentator Jim Nantz.

Romo made $127.4 million in his NFL career and in only three seasons did he make more than $17 million.

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In a 2017 interview, Romo expressed his excitement in making the move from on-field play to off-field commentating.

“To have something that you’re, A) passionate about, B) that kind of keeps you competitive – not everyone gets a chance to do that,” he said. “And then to get a chance to work with the great Jim Nantz, it’s kind of like a home run.”

With Romo taken, ESPN may lean towards Peyton Manning as a Monday Night Football analyst to join Joe Tessitore and Booger McFarland.

Tony Romo might have been the best quarterback in Super Bowl LIII. Pundits joked that he was under the most pressure out of any quarterback in the game but no one was serious about it. He was, in fact, in up in the announcer’s booth. But when the teams were held to just one red zone play and 16 total points, Romo became the spotlight.

Fans admire Romo’s Comments As Announcer

Though he didn’t call any miracle plays or turn into Romostradamus, the former Dallas Cowboys QB didn’t disappoint. After the Rams failed to convert a crucial third down with 8:54 left in the third quarter, Romo said, “This is hard to watch.” It seemed like he was fixing to replace quarterback Jared Goff. He probably would’ve turned in a better performance, too. But Romo’s analyst skills left some wondering why he wasn’t a Super Bowl champ with the Dallas Cowboys if he can see what a team’s going to do before they do it. He read the field so easily during the AFC Championship game that Kansas City fired longtime defensive coordinator Bob Sutton because of it. But even Romo realized that he had his shortcomings.

When announcer Jim Nantz said, “Welcome to the Super Bowl,” Romo replied with “I’ve been waiting to hear welcome to the SuperBowl my whole life.” Even if he didn’t reach the big game as a player, Fans were happy he was there as an announcer. Here are some of the best reactions:

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Tony Romo has been officially chosen to replace Phil Simms as CBS’s top NFL game analyst, and Simms has spoken up about how this announcement “hurt his pride.”

Phil Simms Comments On Being Replaced by Tony Romo at CBS

The veteran reporter and former New York Giants quarterback revealed his feelings about Romo substituting him in a phone interview with Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch:

“Listen, I didn’t make any comments for a lot of reasons and you want to sit there and think about it,” Simms told Deitsch. “Initially was my pride hurt? Absolutely. Of course it was… So it took a little bit. Not long. I started thinking about it in a positive way and then I became excited about it. [CBS Sports Chairman] Sean [McManus] had talked to me over the years about maybe going into the studio. I now get to follow the league like I want to. That was probably the most frustrating thing about my job. You do one or two games a week, you can’t really pay attention to the other teams like I wanted to do. When you do games, you are all-in on those games. On Inside The NFL, I get to say things about stuff that I never get to say in a broadcast.”

Simms will now join the show NFL Today, which is hosted by James Brown and includes analysts Bill Cowher, Boomer Esiason and Bart Scott. Simms will replace former Kansas City Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez, who left the show earlier this year.

The choice of Romo, a former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who retired earlier this month following a less-than-illustrious 14-year career in the NFL, has drawn both criticism and support.

Simms’ son Chris, a FOX Sports college football analyst, stated CBS needs to rethink how it operates if social media backlash influenced the decision.

Joe Buck, meanwhile, questioned if Romo realizes “how much it’s going to take to step into that booth and go 100 mph.”

SportsDay’s Barry Horn wrote in an opinion piece recently that he believed replacing Simms with Romo would be an improvement for CBS.

“Romo may someday prove to be the second coming of Madden, but for now the network will settle for an upgrade over Simms,” Horn wrote.

NEW YORK, NY – DECEMBER 14: Former football player Phil Simms is interviewed during On Location Experiences’ 51 Days To Super Bowl LI Celebration at STK Rooftop on December 14, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for On Location Experiences)