{"id":865563,"date":"2026-09-30T06:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T06:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/865563\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T06:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T06:20:09","slug":"joe-buck-hopes-troy-aikman-stays-at-espn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/865563\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Buck hopes Troy Aikman stays at ESPN"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Buck recently re-upped with ESPN. His long-time partner, Troy Aikman, is still waiting.<\/p>\n

Buck recently said he hopes Aikman will stick around.<\/p>\n

Appearing on 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia, via Brandon Contes of Awful Announcing, Buck made it clear that he doesn\u2019t want to call games without Aikman in the booth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty well on record, having begged out of my last years at Fox to follow him to ESPN, where I stand on all that<\/a>,\u201d Buck said. \u201cI legitimately love the guy like a brother. We\u2019re basically the same age; I\u2019m 57, he\u2019s 59. We\u2019ve both been through divorce. We\u2019re both girl dads. Twenty-five years, you\u2019re sharing a lot of life together. Forget games and in the booth and all that stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I hope so. I mean, both of us were up. It wasn\u2019t like we were doing some national signing day where we walk in arm-in-arm and then sign contracts at the same time. We\u2019ve always kind of kept that stuff separate. I\u2019m obviously hopeful, to say the least, that something gets done. But that\u2019s kind of his world, and ESPN\u2019s world, and I\u2019ve got to kind of mind my own yard in that stuff. I think that\u2019s the best way to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

At one point, it appeared that Buck and Aikman were a package deal<\/a>. That changed, when Buck signed and Aikman didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

ESPN is rolling the dice by waiting. Aikman could end up at CBS or Amazon. Of course, ESPN would also have the flexibility to put the Mannings or Pat McAfee in the booth with Buck.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the white whale known as Travis Kelce. He was already sniffing around Amazon last year. He\u2019ll be able to pick his spot \u2014 and name his price \u2014 if he retires from playing after 2026.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also impossible to overlook the reality that Aikman\u2019s desire to double dip by working for the Dolphins and ESPN could make him less attractive. Aikman can\u2019t enter team facilities, and he can\u2019t attend practice. Others who don\u2019t work for an NFL team (or who don\u2019t partially own the team) face no such restrictions.<\/p>\n

Aikman recently \u201ccalled bullshit<\/a>\u201d on the notion that other broadcasters don\u2019t have conflicts of interest. Sorry, Troy, but you\u2019re missing the point. You work for the Dolphins, and you\u2019ve said it was smart for them to take advantage of the things you learn while covering other teams. There\u2019s a very real difference between navigating friendships and owing a duty as a paid employee to a team that expects you to leverage your access to that team\u2019s benefit.<\/p>\n

If ESPN has other options, why keep a guy who has one hand tied behind his back because he sees no issue with covering all 32 teams while working for one of them? Aikman is good, but he\u2019s not John Madden (then again, no one is). ESPN could throw money at a bigger name than Aikman, and ESPN wouldn\u2019t have to worry about the new hire having a side hustle in the form of employment by a team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Buck recently re-upped with ESPN. His long-time partner, Troy Aikman, is still waiting. Buck recently said he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-865563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}