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As Joe Buck and Troy Aikman prepare to call ESPN’s first Super Bowl, there has been tension between the 25-year booth partners over their respective contract talks, Front Office Sports has learned.
After The Athletic reported last month that Buck has reached a new six-year deal with ESPN that will keep him as the voice of the Monday Night Football booth through the network’s next Super Bowl, there has been unspoken tension between the partners that one has a new contract while the other, Aikman, has not received a formal offer.
On Monday night, before the Rams took on the Bills at SoFi Stadium, the site of this season’s Super Bowl, Buck “broke the ice” on this unspoken tension, and he and Aikman had an argument, a source said. It ultimately de-escalated, and the two had a broadcast in which viewers never would have been able to decipher that something was amiss.
An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment.
During the 2022 offseason, ESPN signed Buck and Aikman away from Fox to five-year deals. ESPN had several years of wayward booths after Mike Tirico left for NBC in 2016, and with this move, it landed arguably the top broadcast team not just in the NFL, but in all of sports. In the previous round of negotiations, Aikman was the first to reach a deal with ESPN, and then Buck joined weeks later after Fox agreed to let him out of the last year of his contract.
While FOS previously reported that Buck and Aikman are both represented by CAA, they have different agents.
ESPN is playing a dangerous game of chicken by letting Aikman’s contract talks linger until after the season, as it risks signaling to him that the network is ambivalent about his return. Aikman, 59, was a three-time Super Bowl champion quarterback with the Cowboys and remains as prepared and incisive as any working analyst in sports. What if Aikman leaves and Buck does not have the same excellent chemistry with his replacement?
It is not immediately clear what ESPN or Aikman’s strategies would be if they parted ways after the Super Bowl. For Aikman, CBS’s top announce booth could potentially be open, as the network recently parted ways with Tony Romo and J.J. Watt has been working alongside Jim Nantz on the top team. The Athletic reported that Kirk Herbstreit has a new deal with Amazon, but the streamer has an out in the deal.
Among ESPN’s potential options, Greg Olsen called a Super Bowl for Fox while Tom Brady was taking a gap year between the NFL and working as an announcer, and is a looming free agent. Sean McVay will be highly sought after by multiple networks if he leaves the Rams. Jason Kelce and Kurt Warner have been working on ESPN’s second NFL broadcast team for international games on NFL Network.
In addition to Monday Night Football, Buck has been more visible around other properties in the Disney family. He has guest-hosted Good Morning America on ABC and will be a guest judge on the network’s Super Bowl-themed Dancing With the Stars episode on Tuesday. He has also hosted ESPN Jeopardy, which streamed on Hulu, Disney+ and the ESPN app.
