Troy Aikman says ESPN hiring him and Joe Buck was partly to help ‘mend’ network’s relationship with NFL

The turnaround of ESPN’s relationship with the NFL over the past ten years has been something to behold.

In 2016, the partnership could best be described as icy. ESPN was still in its hard-hitting investigative journalism era, leaning heavily into stories that directly threatened the NFL’s bottom line like concussions and players protesting racial injustice. Meanwhile, a rotating cast of commentators filled the network’s Monday Night Football booth, none of whom lived up to the high standards of the package.

The combination of factors resulted in the NFL awarding ESPN a series of lackluster schedules for its Monday-night package.

But in the last few years, the relationship has warmed considerably. In 2021, ESPN agreed to a new media-rights deal with the league that would pay the NFL an average of $2.7 billion annually, the most of any broadcast partner. In return, ESPN retained Monday Night Football and, crucially, entered the Super Bowl rotation for the first time in the network’s history. The lesson? Money can certainly help repair a business partnership, at least to an extent. But the NFL was under no obligation to strengthen ESPN’s schedule despite the bigger paychecks. That would be on ESPN to improve its product.

Enter: Troy Aikman and Joe Buck. After years roaming through the NFL broadcaster wilderness, cycling through everyone from Steve Levy to Jason Witten to Joe Tessitore to Brian Griese to Booger McFarland, the longtime Fox commentator duo arrived in Bristol to save the day. ESPN, of course, paid a pretty penny to make it happen, paying both announcers north of $15 million annually.

The NFL took notice, and ESPN began getting better games. Now, the two entities are closer than ever. Earlier this year, ESPN acquired NFL Network from the league and, in return, gave the NFL a 10 percent equity stake in the network.

Aikman is under no illusions that the acquisition of him and Buck had everything to do with the newly cozy relationship between his network and the league. However, he’s also willing to acknowledge that it played a role. During a recent interview with sports media reporter Richard Deitsch, Aikman discussed how ESPN’s hiring of him and Buck helped mend the network’s relationship with the NFL.

“I came over in 2022 in large part to kind of help mend the relationship with ESPN and the NFL,” he said, per Sports Media Watch. “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.”

Aikman’s comments came in the same interview where he raised some uncertainty about his future with ESPN. The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback has a contract that expires following this season’s Super Bowl, and despite his partner Joe Buck recently signing a six-year extension with ESPN, Aikman is not committing to returning to the network.

While his future with ESPN is still up in the air, Aikman certainly feels he’s been a significant contributor to the network’s business interests outside of the quality of its Monday Night Football broadcasts. Perhaps that’s a message he’s trying to send to ESPN as he negotiates a new contract.