Tony Romo hung up his helmet in 2017 and walked straight into CBS’s top booth. Within weeks, he was predicting plays before the snap, and the league’s most-watched analyst was born. His path made the broadcast chair look like the ultimate second act. But Darren Woodson, another Dallas Cowboys legend, says Roger Staubach saw it differently and told him, flat out, not to even look at ESPN.

During a recent episode of the Darren Woodson Show, the former Cowboys safety revealed his conversation with Staubach about his next career step while nearing retirement.

“I had a man named Roger Staubach. When I was retiring, he had been mentoring me throughout the years and he wanted me to go right into commercial real estate,” Woodson said. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to go try this ESPN thing.’ And he kept telling me, ‘Don’t do it.’ And I said, ‘Well, why?’ And he said, ‘I’m going to exit my business. I’m going to build this business and I’m going to exit it.’

“He said, ‘The only exit that you’re going to get when you go to ESPN, they’re going to love you for a while. You’re going to be the new guy. You’re a former Cowboy. Ratings are going to go up, but the only exit they’re going to show you is at the end. You’re not going to be the shiny toy, and they’re going to exit you out the door.’ That was the piece of advice that I got.”

While they played in entirely different eras for the Dallas Cowboys, Roger Staubach and Darren Woodson shared a very close relationship. Woodson did acknowledge Staubach’s advice. However, he didn’t particularly follow it.

After 12 seasons in the league with the Cowboys, Woodson officially announced his retirement in December 2004, after sitting out the 2004 season due to a back injury. He then transitioned straight into broadcasting, signing on as an NFL studio analyst for ESPN in early 2005.

Woodson also laid out several examples, noting how tough working as an employee in a broadcast network is.

“I’ve watched guys, whether it be Jerome Bettis, who was shown the door when ESPN made cuts, they were shown the door, and they put in all this work. And that’s just the process. If you don’t own it, you’re just a commodity. And I didn’t I mean, after a while, I watched guys go, and in and out, and I thought, this is not going to I don’t want to be on that end.”

For context, after joining ESPN in 2013 as an analyst on NFL Live and SportsCenter, Jerome Bettis became a part of ESPN’s highly publicized 2017 corporate layoffs.

Earlier this year as well, due to the ESPN and NFL Network merger, there was a massive restructuring. Subsequently, former NFL stars like Ryan Clark and Cam Newton were left unemployed because of the layoffs.

However, Darren Woodson was never laid off and left the network entirely on his own terms in May 2019.

The post “Don’t Even Look at ESPN”: Cowboys Legend Reveals Roger Staubach’s Blunt Warning Against Joining the Network appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.