Tony Romo wasn’t the only former NFL quarterback to get a lucrative contract offer from CBS last week. Romo was just the only one to accept.
According to the New York Post, CBS offered Peyton Manning a contract that would have paid him $10 million to $12 million a year for five or six seasons.
The report doesn’t actually say that Manning turned CBS down, just that he “was not quick to decide.” It appears that Manning was CBS’s backup plan to be the network’s No. 1 analyst if Romo had turned them down, but it’s not clear whether CBS will still try to hire Manning in any other capacity.
Manning has long been ESPN’s top choice to serve as Monday Night Football color commentator, but so far he has chosen not to work in television in any major capacity. He does some work for ESPN’s online subscription service, but to get him to make the commitment to become a game analyst might require an offer exceeding the $17 million a year that Romo got from CBS.