DALLAS — Troy Aikman expected to have a new contract with ESPN before the 2026 NFL season began. With Week 2 wrapping up Monday night, the deal is not done, and Aikman said he does not know when it will be or whether it will be at all.
Aikman, who quarterbacked the Dallas Cowboys to three Super Bowl titles, made the comments on the latest episode of Sports Media with Richard Deitsch. Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch first reported them Sunday. His current deal expires after this season, the fifth for Aikman and Joe Buck in ESPN’s Monday Night Football booth. Aikman said he has not spoken with ESPN executives about what Buck’s new extension means for his own negotiations.
“I thought something would be done prior to the start of this season,” Aikman said. “I’ve never gone into the last year of a contract ever since I signed with the Dallas Cowboys. And so I thought that it would be done. It’s not. When it might get done, if it gets done, is anyone’s guess. And it’s really not something that I’m putting a lot of energy into.”
Buck and Aikman were paired at Fox in 2002 and stayed together when both signed five-year deals with ESPN in 2022. Buck had been at Fox for 28 years by then. Every Super Bowl the network aired from 2005 through 2020 had him on play-by-play with Aikman as the analyst.
Four years ago, near the end of his last Fox contract, Aikman said on the record that he was unsure whether he would be working for Fox, Amazon Prime Video, or both. He ended up with neither. The pair opened this season on Sept. 14 by calling the Kansas City Chiefs’ 31-10 win over the Denver Broncos at Arrowhead Stadium.
Joe Buck Signed A Six-Year Extension With ESPN Last Week
ESPN signed Buck to a six-year extension worth about $18 million per year, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported Wednesday. The extension takes Buck’s run at the network to 11 years. Josh Krulewitz, ESPN’s executive vice president of communications, said in a statement that the company would not be “addressing talent contract specifics publicly before the Super Bowl.”
Buck is also the preferred choice of ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro to call the World Series if ESPN and ABC acquire that property, according to Marchand. The next MLB rights deal begins with the 2029 season. There is “no question” Buck’s extension will factor into his own decision, Aikman said.
“How much of that is my decision, I guess is yet to be determined,” Aikman explained. “Would I like to continue working with Joe Buck moving down the road? 100%.”
ESPN and ABC carry the Super Bowl this season for the first time under the current NFL rights agreement. It will be the first Super Bowl assignment for Buck and Aikman since they called Super Bowl LIV for Fox in February 2020.
Troy Aikman Says The ESPN-NFL Relationship Has Been Repaired
ESPN reached a deal last summer to acquire NFL Media assets, including NFL Network, in exchange for the league taking a 10% stake in the company. Aikman brought up the stake twice during his conversation with Deitsch, according to Sports Media Watch. He said Buck and others also had a hand in rebuilding the relationship between the network and the league.
“I came over in 2022 in large part to kind of help mend the relationship with ESPN and the NFL,” Aikman said. “I feel like the reason that I was brought over, I fulfilled whatever obligations they were expecting from me. So much so that … the league now owns 10% of the network. So I would say the fence has been mended.”
The two sides fell out during the late years of John Skipper’s tenure as ESPN president. Pitaro, who succeeded Skipper in 2018, made repairing the network’s relationship with the NFL one of his primary goals. ESPN secured its Super Bowl rights in 2021, a year before Buck and Aikman left Fox.
Aikman and Buck call the New York Giants at the Los Angeles Rams on Monday night at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. The Giants opened their season with a 28-20 win over the Cowboys at MetLife Stadium on Sept. 13. Kickoff is set for 7:15 p.m. CT on ESPN.
