The ESPN Monday Night Football booth is suddenly carrying more intrigue than usual. Troy Aikman’s future at the network is uncertain, Joe Buck has a fresh long-term deal, and that mismatch has reportedly spilled over into their working relationship.
Aikman is in the final year of his ESPN contract, and there’s been no agreement announced for what comes next. Buck, by contrast, reportedly landed a new six-year deal with ESPN last month. That alone has fueled the sense that the booth is entering an awkward stretch.
The tension took on more weight this week after a report that Buck and Aikman had an argument on Monday before the Buffalo Bills-Los Angeles Rams game. According to Front Office Sports’ Ryan Glasspiegel, Buck tried to “break the ice” before kickoff, and the exchange escalated before cooling back down.
Aikman was asked about it Thursday on 96.7 The Ticket, and he didn’t exactly shut the door on the story.
“There’s probably a time and a place for all that. I don’t know if now is the time,” Aikman said (H/T Joseph Hoyt of The Dallas Morning News). “I don’t know if it’s hard to figure out kind of what happened.”
Aikman also addressed his own contract status with ESPN, and he sounded like someone preparing for the possibility that this is his last run with the network.
“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. “I’m looking forward to whatever the rest of this season does hold and the Super Bowl and all that and where my next landing spot may be.”
For now, the two are still paired together through the rest of the season, and they’re scheduled to work ESPN’s first Super Bowl broadcast in February. After that, the future of the booth looks wide open. The source of the frustration appears to be the same thing hanging over Aikman’s ESPN future: one broadcaster has a new deal, and the other does not.
According to Glasspiegel, the argument happened before the Rams-Bills matchup at SoFi Stadium, the site of this season’s Super Bowl. He wrote that Buck and Aikman had a disagreement over their respective contract situations, that it eventually de-escalated, and that viewers would never have known anything was off once the game began.
For now, though, the situation is plainly unsettled. Aikman sounds ready to see what the market brings at season’s end, and the broadcast booth he shares with Buck may not look the same after 2026.
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