Troy Aikman knew when it was time to go. His aching body made the decision for him when he ended his NFL career in 2001. A quarter of a century later, with one of the top quarterbacks of the 1990s established as half of the pre-eminent broadcasting duo in American sports, his potential exit from the booth is not so clearcut.
Aikman clearly feels his voice remains in fine working order, but his bosses at ESPN may not agree. The color commentator’s Monday Night Football play-by-play partner, Joe Buck, is reported to have agreed a new deal with the network worth $108m over six seasons (his previous deal was for five years at $15m a season), yet Aikman has claimed ESPN does not want to renew his contract.
The longest-running television broadcast partnership in NFL history looks set to end once ESPN broadcasts the Super Bowl in February. It would be Buck and Aikman’s seventh Super Bowl together. After that, Aikman’s existing five-year, $90m deal expires.
The prospective rupture is another tremor shaking the NFL’s media landscape only shortly after another ex-Cowboys quarterback turned high-profile TV personality, Tony Romo, was dropped by CBS. The network formally parted ways with the 46-year-old on 2 October, a month after he pleaded no contest to a civil charge of driving while intoxicated in Wisconsin in July.
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Adding to the intrigue, Buck and Aikman argued at SoFi Stadium before the Los Angeles Rams hosted the Buffalo Bills on 12 October after Buck broached the matter of the contract-related tension between them, according to Front Office Sports.
The murky situation is an unwelcome distraction seemingly of its own making for ESPN, which will produce and show a live Super Bowl for the first time next year at SoFi. It wanted hype; now it has hoopla. If Aikman’s version of events is accurate, it’s surprising the company would consider terminating the partnership having earlier this year hailed a “surge” in viewership that “coincides with the Buck-Aikman era”. ESPN representatives did not respond to a request for comment, but the network has previously said it “won’t be addressing talent contract specifics publicly before the Super Bowl”.
Aikman has been less reticent about giving his side of the story. He essentially confirmed the Front Office Sports report in an interview with a Dallas radio station, 96.7 The Ticket: “There’s probably a time and a place for all that to be discussed. I don’t know if now is the time. I don’t know that it’s hard to figure out kind of what’s happened. 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. I’m looking forward to whatever the rest of this year does hold with the Super Bowl and all that and where my next landing spot might be.” He added to Underscore that he expects ESPN to “go in a different direction”. That is a logical assumption: why else enter negotiations with Buck during the season but not his partner?
It could also make sense for Aikman to advertise his imminent availability to alert potential suitors and perhaps galvanize ESPN into making a late offer to keep him away from the competition. But publicly airing his disquiet also seems characteristically on-brand for a man who has built a reputation for candid analysis since swapping the field for the booth.
A Hall of Famer, Aikman retired after guiding Dallas to three Super Bowl titles in 12 seasons. (True fact: the Cowboys used to win things.) He teamed up with Buck at Fox Sports in 2002 and cosplayed as Mr T when the network announced its new “A-Team”. Aikman and Buck loved it when a plan came together for them to jump ship to ESPN in quick succession in 2022, with Buck traded for the rights to a college football game. They have since broken the longevity record held by Pat Summerall and John Madden and brought stability to what was once a problem position for ESPN.
Buck, a 57-year-old NFL and MLB media veteran who is the son of the beloved late St Louis broadcaster Jack Buck, is steady, authoritative but unobtrusive. Aikman, who turns 60 next month, has remained perceptive long after his playing career ended. He has also had many plays in his business portfolio over the years: car dealerships, co-ownership of a Nascar team, a light beer brewery in Dallas and a minority stake in MLB’s San Diego Padres. He’s also been an informal consultant to the Miami Dolphins.
Star broadcasters command similar salaries to elite players and attract similarly feverish examinations of their performances, contract status and potential free-agent destinations. Fox Sports handed Tom Brady a 10-year, $375m contract in 2022 – inflating the market and presumably informing Aikman’s opinion of what his services are now worth – though the fast-evolving broadcasting landscape makes future negotiations hard to predict.
The rise of streaming services has led to more games on more platforms. Unlike when Aikman retired from playing at 34 after concussions and back injuries, he may not be short of suitors. Calling Thursday matchups for Amazon Prime would not carry the same prestige as Mondays on ESPN, though the viewing figures are similar. Amazon may be ready to freshen up its act, given that its lead commentator, Al Michaels, is nearly 82 and the analyst Kirk Herbstreit’s job security is reportedly tenuous. Netflix is streaming five games this season.
Among the legacy giants, CBS promoted former Houston Texans star JJ Watt from its No 2 crew to replace Romo. If it concludes that the solid but relatively inexperienced Watt isn’t ready for primetime, the network may be interested in Aikman as a permanent successor to Romo, who was its lead analyst since 2017.
There’s a lot at stake. Viewing figures for live televised football remain extraordinarily resilient in the era of on-demand streaming and social media. Advertising inventory for the Super Bowl sold out in August, while last season Monday Night Football averaged 15.8 million viewers over 21 games – ESPN’s second-best set of ratings for MNF in the 20-year history of the show at a time when TV audiences in general are plummeting. But anything that damages the product and turns off viewers – a new pairing who don’t have the chemistry and credibility of Buck and Aikman, for example – is a problem, considering the increasingly marginal economics of the media industry.
ESPN completed its acquisition of the NFL Network in January, with the league taking a 10% equity stake in the broadcaster. It pays the NFL $2.7bn a year in rights fees. But estimates suggest that ESPN’s reach via traditional bundled services has roughly halved over the past 15 years from a peak of 100 million households. Over that time, rights fees nearly doubled. And the league wants another huge increase for its next deals.
Half the customers and twice the cost (or thereabouts): it’s not the makings of a viable long-term business in any sector. And other strategies in the cord-cutting era – job cuts, launching on-demand streaming services, embracing betting, more intrusive and pervasive advertising – haven’t come close to replicating the lucrative success of the old-school cable and satellite subscriber model.
The old certainties no longer apply, whether in the boardroom or on the air. One source of intrigue over the next couple of months is whether the teamwork of Buck and Aikman, as professional as they are, is perceptibly affected as the season’s climax and the likely end of their partnership looms. But nothing seemed out of the ordinary on the broadcast Monday when the San Francisco 49ers beat the Washington Commanders.
Buck stressed his friendship with Aikman, and the importance of getting along, in an interview with the Associated Press in 2023. “I think you need to put as much work on the personal relationship as you do the professional. I don’t know that everybody does that,” he said. “I know a lot of stories of broadcast partners that have been together for a nice chunk of time that didn’t really enjoy being with each other. I just can’t imagine being in that situation in this kind of a job when you’re relying on each other in front of millions of people live.”