ESPN made it official Monday when it introduced Troy Aikman and Joe Buck as their new Monday Night Football announcing team in a conference call with reporters.
Aikman and Buck spent over 20 years at Fox Sports as the No. 1 team on NFL Sundays. But everything changed quickly once the 2021 NFL season ended. With both men in the final year of their contracts, Aikman, the Cowboys Hall of Fame and three-time Super Bowl winning quarterback, left first. Buck, the play-by-play man, departed almost a month later.
“Yeah I think there were two determined sides to try to make the resolution happen fast once that took place,” Buck said on the process when Aikman departed. “It literally dropped out of the sky and the more I get around it, Troy and I were just blown away.”
On Monday, Aikman and Buck toured the ESPN Bristol, Conn., campus for the first time. Buck said he was overwhelmed by the support the two were given by the ESPN Monday Night Football production team.
And while the two were getting a warm welcome, it was Aikman saying the hardest conversation he had when leaving Fox was with sideline reporter Erin Andrews.
“I will tell you the toughest call I had to make was to Erin Andrews and tell her that I was leaving,” Aikman said. “And she’s like a sister to both of us. You become very, very close with the people that are on your crew.”
The conversations Aikman also had with his former Cowboys coach, Jimmy Johnson, weren’t as emotional. Johnson, a studio analyst with Fox Sports, was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020 during an emotional scene on the air.
Aikman and Johnson are very close despite not seeing each other much.
“It was challenging for all of us,” Aikman said. “I love all those guys, all the talent, all the guys behind the scenes. All the people you don’t know. The reality of it, with Jimmy I would see him about twice a year, three if we were calling the Super Bowl. I’d see him at the (Fox Sports) seminar. I’d see him at the NFC Championship Game and then I’d see him if I was calling a Super Bowl. It wasn’t like I saw him a lot.”
Aikman said a need for a reduced television schedule was another reason why the job at ESPN attracted him. Aikman and Buck were doing two games a week, Thursday NFL games on Amazon Prime and the Sunday afternoon game on Fox.
Now with ESPN, it’s just Monday Nights.
“It was an opportunity that was just the best fit for me,” Aikman said. “To be with this property, doing Monday nights, getting a chance to still do playoff games, Super Bowls, and it’s ultimately what led me. I didn’t think it was going to happen until a little bit after the Super Bowl that I think it was a possibility.”
