Bill Simmons has heard Troy Aikman’s account of his looming exit from ESPN, and he finds it about as convincing as Sean McVay calling a bubble screen on third down.
On the latest episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, Simmons poured cold water on the prevailing narrative that ESPN cast Aikman aside while rewarding Joe Buck, suggesting the network may simply have balked at Aikman’s asking price. Simmons, who left ESPN under acrimonious circumstances in 2015, said that experience taught him to distrust whichever version of a media breakup reaches the public first.
“I feel like this is one of those classic sports media things where whatever the version of the story that somebody wanted to get out, got out first,” Simmons said. “But how do we know Aikman didn’t ask ESPN for like 25, 30 million? And they’re like, ‘Yeah, we’re not paying that.’ And now he’s taking umbrage. Meanwhile, he did this Miami thing already. I just, I don’t wanna hear the victim thing for Troy Aikman. He’s got a pretty good life.”
Buck and Aikman, partners since 2002 at Fox and then ESPN, both entered 2026 in the final year of their contracts, and ESPN signed Buck to a six-year, $108 million extension last month without reaching a new deal with Aikman. Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports reported that the strain between the two boiled over into an argument before the Bills-Rams game at SoFi Stadium, and Aikman didn’t dispute it when he appeared on KTCK The Ticket in Dallas days later. That same night, Aikman told Jimmy Traina he expected ESPN to go in a different direction, noting that nobody had approached him about a new contract with the Super Bowl in February and his deal expiring in March.
Simmons was hazier on the “Miami thing” than on the money, at one point wondering aloud whether Aikman had acquired some kind of ownership stake in the Dolphins. He hadn’t, though his involvement in Miami grew far beyond what anyone envisioned when it began. Adam Schefter reported in January that the Dolphins hired Aikman as a consultant for their general manager search after firing Chris Grier, roughly a month after Aikman said he was “flabbergasted” by Mike McDaniel’s bizarre fourth-quarter management in a Monday Night Football loss to the Steelers. ESPN insisted the arrangement didn’t interfere with his broadcasting duties, and the role was billed as temporary, but Aikman stayed on to help with the head coaching search after McDaniel was fired
New head coach Jeff Hafley later described Aikman as a trusted sounding board, and Aikman raised eyebrows across the league by explaining on the Cowboys’ DLLS podcast that Miami valued his relationships and the information he could obtain that the team couldn’t. That arrangement has since wound down, with Mark Maske of Front Office Sports reporting last week that Aikman no longer has a formal, ongoing consulting agreement with Miami, but not before it invited a year’s worth of conflict-of-interest questions about the man calling the league’s Monday night showcase.
Aikman’s now-former side gig is a large part of why Simmons can’t summon much sympathy. He pointed out that Aikman calls 17 regular-season games a year, flies around the country to do it, and would see ESPN draw virtually the same audience for those games whether he’s in the booth or not. When Cousin Sal noted that Simmons usually champions talent banding together in negotiations, Simmons granted that Buck and Aikman hadn’t done that, but questioned the assumption that Buck was the one who broke ranks. In his telling, the pair could have pulled a “Friends” cast maneuver and negotiated as a unit, unless Aikman believed he was worth more than Buck.
“I don’t believe any of this stuff because I’ve been through it where people have written things about stuff I’ve been involved with or whatever, and it’s always like whatever the first narrative that comes out becomes the narrative,” Simmons said. “And in this case, I don’t believe it.”
Simmons also handed ESPN a blueprint for life after Aikman, proposing that the network jettison the ManningCast altogether and give Peyton and Eli Manning eight games apiece in the main booth. The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand floated a similar arrangement last month, identifying the Mannings as a plausible successor to Aikman, though Puck’s John Ourand recently reported that his most reliable sources expect Greg Olsen to inherit the seat once his Fox contract expires and he’s free to chase the No. 1 job he lost to Tom Brady.
Whatever number Aikman put in front of ESPN, Simmons isn’t worried about where he’ll end up, and a quick survey of the league’s other top booths suggests he has good reason to be confident. CBS put Tony Romo on leave after his July arrest in Milwaukee and severed ties with him earlier this month, leaving J.J. Watt to call the rest of the season alongside Jim Nantz with no long-term successor in place, while Amazon recently extended Kirk Herbstreit on Thursday Night Football in a deal that reportedly lets the streamer move on if one of its top targets becomes available, with McVay being chief among them.
Simmons would happily speed up that process, though.
“Speaking of TV, Sean McVay, just go to Amazon already,” Simmons said. “Just do it now, do it in time for Week 7. They have the Herbstreit job waiting for you. Just go next week.”
“Just two weeks in a row of atrocious coaching from [Sean McVay].”
@BillSimmons and @TheCousinSal on Sean McVay’s coaching troubles and the Rams’ shocking loss to the Cardinals. https://t.co/GCFMXbpN5S
— The Ringer (@ringer) October 19, 2026
ESPN might have one waiting, too, if Aikman is right about the network moving on when his contract expires in March.
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