Mike Wilbon, the ESPN legend who co-hosts “Pardon the Interruption,” went to bat for the network’s Monday Night Football stalwart Troy Aikman as the Dallas Cowboys legend’s contract drama continues to unravel.
Aikman’s future at ESPN remains unsettled: he’s in the final year of his deal and unsigned, while his longtime booth partner, Joe Buck, has already re-signed. Front Office Sports reported last week that the two argued over their contract situations before last week’s broadcast.
ESPN’s Mike Wilbon Comes Out in Troy Aikman’s Support
FOS’s Ryan Glasspiegel had reported that the argument happened in the booth before the Buffalo Bills’ 37-34 overtime win over the Los Angeles Rams on October 12. The game was at SoFi Stadium, where ESPN will call its first Super Bowl in February 2027.
A source told the outlet that Buck was the one who finally brought up the unspoken tension over their different contracts, and that the argument subsided before kickoff, with nothing on the broadcast to indicate anything was wrong.
Wilbon opened with a question on the show he co-hosts with Tony Kornheiser that he was more than ready to answer on Monday: “You know who calls a game better than Troy Aikman?”
“You knuckleheads, NOBODY calls a game better than Troy Aikman,” he said in a resounding tone.
The Aikman-Buck pair landed at ESPN in the 2022 offseason, when the network signed both away from Fox on five-year deals. Aikman agreed first, and Buck followed weeks later, after Fox let him out of the final year of his contract.
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Buck’s new six-year deal, which The Athletic reported in September is worth more than $100 million, runs through ESPN’s second Super Bowl in 2031, and the friction between the partners dates to that report.
Aikman, whose contract is up after this season, still hasn’t received a formal offer.
Days after Buck’s extension surfaced, Aikman told Richard Deitsch in a podcast that he “thought something would be done prior to the start of this season. I’ve never gone into the last year of a contract ever since I signed with the Dallas Cowboys.”
Aikman also responded to the FOS report on October 15 on “96.7 The Ticket” in Dallas.
“I don’t know if now is the time,” Aikman said, before turning to what comes next: “I’ll broadcast through this season, and I’ll be a free agent at the end of the year and kind of see what happens. But I’m looking forward to whatever the rest of this season does hold and the Super Bowl and all that and where my next landing spot might be.”
Not everyone feels sorry for him. Bill Simmons, who left ESPN in 2015, offered another theory on “The Bill Simmons Podcast”: “But how do we know Aikman didn’t ask ESPN for like $25M, $30 million? … I don’t wanna hear the victim thing for Troy Aikman. He’s got a pretty good life.”
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If they split, both sides would have options. The top booth at CBS could be open after the network parted ways with Tony Romo, with J.J. Watt working alongside Jim Nantz for now.
Amazon, meanwhile, has an out in Kirk Herbstreit’s new “Thursday Night Football” deal.
On ESPN’s side, Greg Olsen, who is playing out the final year of his Fox contract, is a possible successor to Aikman, while other names such as the Kelce brothers and Pat McAfee continue to be floated.
This article originally appeared on Pro Football Network.