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Tom Cruise has a memorable line in the movie Cocktail. When his character tries to break up with his girlfriend, she says she doesn’t want their relationship to end badly. Cruise replies, “Everything ends badly. Otherwise it wouldn’t end.”
That’s how I feel about the possible breakup of ESPN’s Troy Aikman and Joe Buck, the longest-running broadcast duo in NFL TV at 25 years and counting.
The duo is poised to call ESPN’s telecast of Super Bowl LXI on Feb. 14. But during an interview with 96.7 The Ticket in Dallas on Thursday, Aikman appeared to publicly confirm Front Office Sports’s report of “tension” with Buck over their respective contract talks.
While Buck recently signed a six-year, $108 million contract extension with ESPN, according to The Athletic, Aikman is still in limbo. With his contract up after this season, sources say he doesn’t have a formal offer from ESPN. On Thursday morning, the former Cowboys superstar dangled the possibility of leaving the four letters for greener pastures.
“There’s probably a time and a place for all that to be discussed. I don’t know if now is the time,” said the straight-shooting Aikman about Ryan Glasspiegel’s report that he and Buck argued before Monday night’s Bills-Rams game. “I don’t know that it’s hard to figure out kind of what 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, and the Super Bowl and all that, and where my next landing spot may be.”
It’s hard to fathom how things have gotten to this point. Before the 2026 NFL season, Aikman and Buck were on top of the world. They were poised to call ESPN’s historic first Super Bowl telecast—after previously calling six at Fox Sports. Aikman and Buck were entering the final season of their five-year contracts at ESPN worth a total of $90 million and $75 million, respectively. They were both represented by the same agency, CAA, which should have given the duo negotiating leverage as a team. They were finally getting their due from media critics like me as the best broadcast duo calling NFL games.
But everything changed when The Athletic reported Buck got his bag—and Aikman didn’t. The unspoken tension between the duo finally boiled over at SoFi Stadium Monday night when Buck tried to “break the ice” with Aikman. Ultimately, cooler heads prevailed. If you watched their call Monday night (ironically from the same stadium where they’ll call the Super Bowl on Valentine’s Day), you wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss.
Could Aikman and Buck stay together at ESPN? Sure. Family members fight and make up. These two have been as close as brothers. Just last month, Buck told Front Office Sports Tonight’s Matt Iseman of Aikman: “He and I basically are the same age, we’re both girl dads first time around. And we had a lot of shared life experiences. And I know how he looks at the game. He knows where I’m going to go before I go there. Vice versa. He knows I’m his biggest fan.”
From ESPN’s standpoint, there are still four months between now and the end of the season. Management could conclude it wants both Aikman and Buck in the booth when the network broadcasts its second Super Bowl after the 2030 season.
But this is not just about money. It’s also about two different personalities. Buck has always considered himself an entertainer who can be just as successful hosting Hollywood talk shows as he is calling play-by-play. Hence his appearing on sister Disney network ABC’s Good Morning America this summer to tout his new gig hosting ESPN Jeopardy!, or appearing as a guest judge on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars this past week, or hosting his own short-lived Joe Buck Live on HBO, which was canceled after only three episodes in 2009.
In short, Buck seemingly plays the political game inside ESPN/Disney better than Aikman, who wants to do his job and keep the extraneous Mickey Mouse stuff to a minimum. Given the rift between the pair, it seems the chances are increasing that Aikman plays out his contract and joins another NFL TV partner like CBS Sports, which recently dropped Tony Romo, Amazon Prime Video or even Netflix.
If Aikman leaves ESPN, it would be a shame. There’s no guarantee that Buck would have the same on-air chemistry with a potential new partner, such as Greg Olsen of Fox. Aikman and Buck are so comfortable they finish each other’s sentences. It could impact ESPN too. Don’t forget, Aikman’s star power and gravitas helped ESPN attract a much stronger game schedule for Monday Night Football. And it also helped ESPN repair its once-broken relationship with the NFL brass on Park Avenue.
I hate to say I told you so, but I previously warned it was dangerous for ESPN to play contract chicken with Aikman during its historic “Year of the Super Bowl.” His frank comments about his “next landing spot” indicate he’s thinking about his next TV home—and that his longtime partnership with Buck could be history.
Sports TV can be a cold, heartless business. Partnerships come and go. It’s rare for any TV partnership to last as long as Aikman and Buck’s has. Don’t forget Aikman was ready to leave Buck in March 2022 when he joined ESPN from Fox. Their union would have ended then and there had Fox not allowed Buck to escape the last year of his contract. That enabled him to join ESPN and re-team with Aikman. But after 25 years, the pair could be headed to divorce court.
As one source outside of ESPN tells me: “I think you’re seeing the end of the marriage unfold.”
Even in the glamorous, big bucks world of sports TV, everything ends badly. Otherwise it wouldn’t end.
