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During Troy Aikman’s appearance before 49ers–Commanders on Monday Night Countdown, he heaped praise on San Francisco for rewarding loyal players like Brock Purdy and George Kittle with multi-million contract extensions. “Everybody’s getting paid,” noted Aikman.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for him and ESPN.
Five days after Front Office Sports’s Ryan Glasspiegel reported that “tension” between 25-year TV partners Aikman and Joe Buck exploded into an argument before last week’s broadcast, Aikman and Buck returned to call Monday Night Football. In their intro to this week’s game, it was purely business as usual, with all of their efforts focused on the 49ers–Commanders matchup they were about to call.
At this point, ESPN hasn’t offered the three-time Super Bowl champion a formal extension of his five-year, $90 million contract that expires after the worldwide leader’s first-ever Super Bowl telecast on Feb. 14, 2027, Glasspiegel reported last week. In fact, it’s looking increasingly likely that Aikman will play out his contract and seek what he calls a new “landing spot” with possible employers like CBS Sports, Amazon Prime Video or Netflix.
Meanwhile, Buck is sitting pretty after inking a six-year, $108 million extension that will take him through ESPN’s second Super Bowl after the 2030 NFL season.
As you would expect from two consummate TV veterans, Aikman and Buck didn’t let their off-the-air soap opera impact their telecast. Why should they mess with success? The previous week’s MNF telecast of Bills-Rams averaged a broadcast TV-like 19.8 million viewers. With Aikman and Buck leading the way in the broadcast booth, MNF is off to its best five-week start since acquiring the package in 2006. The iconic primetime package is averaging 19.3 million viewers through Week 5–up 16% over the same period in 2025.
At this point, Aikman has publicly made it clear that he’ll be remaining with ESPN through the Super Bowl. But at the same time, all signs point to that being the end of the Buck–Aikman partnership.
