‘That’s Been Managed Horribly,’ ‘It’s a Huge Distraction’ — ESPN Called Out Over Messy Troy Aikman-Joe Buck Fallout
· Yahoo Sports
Troy Aikman had never worked the final year of a contract, going back to his days with the Dallas Cowboys. This season, he is doing just that in ESPN’s Monday Night Football booth.
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That turn of events has led to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand calling out ESPN content chief Burke Magnus over how the network has handled Aikman’s contract since it extended Aikman’s longtime partner, Joe Buck.
Andrew Marchand Calls Out ESPN Amid Troy Aikman-Joe Buck Rift
“I don’t really understand what ESPN is doing fully,” Marchand started off by saying, mincing no words in his weekly “Marchand & Meterparel: Everybody Loves Sports Media” podcast.
He started with McAfee: “I just think too much enabling of McAfee. The Utah incident, just strange. Weird look.”
He then pointed to the numbers: “They’re giving McAfee the huge $60 million-plus contract per year; they had to add an altcast, the first altcast got 351,000 viewers. That’s terrible. I didn’t think you necessarily needed that to begin with, especially when your main crew is Joe Buck and Troy Aikman.”
From McAfee, Marchand moved to the Aikman situation: “So far, that’s been managed horribly. … Because you sign Joe Buck, now you’ve got Troy Aikman hanging out there, seemingly not gonna come back after this year. It’s a huge distraction.”
His comments come as ESPN gets ready to air Super Bowl LXI on Feb. 14, 2027. It is the first of two Super Bowls on the network’s schedule, and the second follows the 2030 season.
For context, Buck and Aikman have worked side by side since 2002. They called six Super Bowls together at Fox before moving to ESPN as a pair in 2022.
Aikman’s five-year, $90 million contract pays him $18 million a year. In September, that tied him with Tony Romo as the second-highest-paid NFL game analyst, behind only Tom Brady, who signed a 10-year, $375 million deal with FOX.
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Notably, the Buck-Aikman telecast of the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs in Week 1 averaged 23.2 million viewers. That was ESPN’s most-watched Week 1 Monday Night Football game since it landed the primetime package in 2006.
In September, ESPN signed Buck to a six-year, $108 million extension. The deal is set to raise his pay to $18 million a year from $15 million, the same annual figure Aikman earns now. Front Office Sports reported at the time that no deal was imminent for Aikman, even though he and Buck are both represented by CAA.
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Josh Krulewitz, ESPN’s executive vice president of communications, explained the network’s position in September: “With this historic season for ESPN now underway, our entire focus is on bringing fans the best possible football coverage, culminating with our first Super Bowl … To that end, we won’t be addressing talent contract specifics before the Super Bowl.”
Aikman, who turns 60 on Nov. 21, talked about the wait in a September interview with sports media columnist Richard Deitsch: “I thought it would be done. It’s not. When it might get done, if it gets done, is anyone’s guess.”
A month later, his outlook had darkened. On Oct. 15, he told sports media writer Jimmy Traina: “They’re gonna go in a different direction because there’s been no talks, no contract negotiations. … My contract ends in March. It just doesn’t seem logical that if they were gonna keep me, something wouldn’t be in place before that.”
ESPN’s first Super Bowl is now less than four months away, and only one half of the network’s lead booth is signed beyond this season.
This article originally appeared on Pro Football Network.