Troy Aikman went on Dallas radio Thursday morning and confirmed the part that matters. He is going to be a free agent.
“But 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,” Aikman said on KTCK, 96.7 The Ticket.
He did not deny the report that he and Joe Buck had words before Monday night’s game. He just declined to litigate it.
What He Said and Did Not Say
“I think there’s probably a time and a place for all that to be discussed,” Aikman said. “I don’t know if now is the time.”
Then the line that did more work than a denial would have: “I don’t know that it’s hard to figure out kind of what’s happened.”
He also referenced “where my next landing spot might be,” which is not the phrasing of a man who expects to re-sign quickly.
The Report
Front Office Sports published the story Wednesday. Per the outlet, before the Bills-Rams game at SoFi Stadium, Buck broke the ice about the unspoken tension over their contract situations and the two argued, according to an unnamed source. The argument de-escalated and the broadcast showed no sign of it.
Front Office Sports also reported that ESPN has not made Aikman a formal offer. An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment. Beyond the sourced phrase about breaking the ice, there are no quotes from either man in the piece, which is worth keeping in mind.
The Contracts Explain Everything
ESPN signed both men away from Fox in 2022 on five-year deals. Aikman’s was reported at five years and $90 million, roughly $18 million a year, and this is the final season. It runs through ESPN’s Super Bowl broadcast in February 2027.
In September, The Athletic reported that Buck had agreed to a new six-year extension worth about $108 million, keeping him on Monday Night Football through that Super Bowl window. Buck has his deal. Aikman does not have an offer. Both are CAA clients with different agents.
That asymmetry is the whole story, and Aikman has been saying so politely for weeks.
He Flagged This Earlier
On the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast, Aikman was blunter about the timeline.
“I thought something would be done prior to the start of this season,” he said. “I’ve never gone into the last year of a contract ever since I signed with the Dallas Cowboys.” On when a deal might come: “When it might get done, if it gets done, is anybody’s guess.”
He also made clear the issue is not his partner: “Would I like to continue working with Joe Buck moving down the road? 100 percent.”
Buck said something similar in September on a Philadelphia radio show. “I legitimately love the guy like a brother,” he said, adding that he had “begged out of my last years at FOX to follow him to ESPN” and that he was hopeful something gets done.
Why ESPN Is Waiting
The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reports ESPN plans to wait until after Super Bowl LXI in February before deciding whether to re-sign Aikman or move on.
Aikman and Buck have called NFL games together since 2002. This is their 25th season. Aikman is 59, a three-time Super Bowl winner and a 2006 Hall of Fame inductee, and he says he is not spending much energy on it.
“It’s really not something that I’m putting a lot of energy into,” he said.
The market will decide for him. CBS has an unsettled lead booth and Amazon has questions of its own, which means a Hall of Fame analyst hitting free agency in February will not sit long.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.