After spending the past 20 years as the faces of Fox’s NFL coverage, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are taking their talents to ESPN.
The network announced Buck and Aikman will take over Monday Night Football next season, ending a carousel of talent around ESPN’s most-watched program. The stability comes as ESPN will broadcast its first Super Bowl on ABC in 2027. Flex scheduling is also coming to the Monday Night Football schedule, starting with Week 12 of the 2023 season.
Along with Buck and Aikman, Lisa Salters will return as the sideline reporter on Monday Night Football, a role she’s held since 2012.
Aikman’s new ESPN deal will reportedly pay him $18.5 million a year, but he suggested on Dallas sports talk radio that money wasn’t the only factor in leaving his longtime home at Fox.
“Knowing that Amazon was going to be taking over Thursday Night Football, knowing that ESPN potentially could be a player,” Aikman said, adding he hoped Fox would offer him a better contract. They didn’t.
“Fox never jumped into the game. They stayed where they were and never made an offer,” Aikman said on Sportsradio 96.7 and 1310 The Ticket last week. “In fact, I didn’t have any conversation with Fox until I got a call to congratulate me on my new deal.”
Buck had one year remaining on his Fox contract, but was allowed out of his contract early. As part of the deal, Fox will be allowed to choose one Big Ten football game early as part of the TV rights it shares with ESPN, according to the New York Post. In addition to producing other projects for the network, Buck will now work alongside his wife, features reporter Michelle Beisner-Buck.
The popular Manningcast, an alternate Monday Night Football broadcast hosted by Peyton and Eli Manning, will also return next season. New York Post columnist Andrew Marchand — who broke the news of Aikman and Buck’s departure from Fox — thinks ESPN might be taking the Mannings’ future into consideration.
“I wonder if the idea that Peyton Manning might eventually run an NFL team in the future could have been in the back of ESPN’s mind in adding Buck and Aikman to run alongside the Manningcast,” Marchand wrote.
For the past two seasons, Monday Night Football has been called by Steve Levy, Brian Griese, and former Eagles front office executive Louis Riddick. The San Francisco 49ers hired Griese as their new quarterbacks coach, while Riddick interviewed with the Pittsburgh Steelers for their open general manager position. Levy will continue his role on ESPN’s NHL studio team.
Levy and Reddick could be reunited to call some matchups on ESPN, since the network will have more games, including an exclusive Sunday international game on ESPN+ and an exclusive Monday Night Football game on ABC. The number of games will jump again in 2023, when ESPN will have five weeks with multiple games.
What happens at Fox?
Fox will broadcast the Super Bowl next season, and with Buck and Aikman gone, the network suddenly has two holes to fill in its No. 1 booth.
It seems likely that Fox will elevate Kevin Burkhardt and former Panthers tight end Greg Olsen, who did a solid job last season in the network’s No. 2 booth. While it will only be Olsen’s second full season calling NFL games, Burkhardt is a veteran broadcaster who has handled NFL play-by-play duties for the network since 2013. The New Jersey native is also Fox’s main studio host during the MLB playoffs.
Fox will also need to replace Buck on MLB coverage, where he has called the World Series for the past 21 seasons. The likely choice would appear to be Joe Davis, who is the television voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers and has called MLB divisional round playoff games for Fox since 2017.
Who will call Thursday Night Football games on Amazon?
Amazon has not made any announcements, but longtime ESPN college football broadcaster Kirk Herbstreit will be the streaming platform’s analyst on Thursday Night Football, according to the New York Post.
Herbstreit isn’t leaving ESPN — he will continue to appear on College GameDay and call games as the network’s No. 1 college football analyst alongside play-by-play announcer Chris Fowler.
It’s expected that longtime Sunday Night Football announcer Al Michaels — pushed out of the NBC booth to make room for Mike Tirico — will handle play-by-play on Amazon’s exclusive package of games. But Michaels was reportedly waiting to see what would happen with Buck before signing a deal.
If Michaels signs on with Amazon, he’ll be working with longtime Sunday Night Football producer Fred Gaudelli, as NBC is producing the streaming giant’s games. Michaels would also get the opportunity to call a handful of Sunday Night Football games, an appealing prospect as Amazon’s games will only air on TV in the teams’ local markets.
Collinsworth will join Tirico on Sunday Night Football
There was a lot of talk before last season of NBC hiring former New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees to be its next Sunday Night Football analyst. That might remain the plan, but for now NBC is bringing back analyst Cris Collinsworth with a deal that runs through the 2025 season.
Collinsworth will call Sunday Night Football games alongside Tirico, whom NBC hired away from ESPN in 2016. They’ll be joined by sideline reporter Kathryn Tappen, who is expected to replace Michele Tafoya, who left the network following the Super Bowl to pursue a career involving politics.
Brees will continue to appear in-studio as part of the network’s Football Night in America team, and will presumably still call Notre Dame football games, since NBC’s deal to air Fighting Irish games expires following the 2025 season.
With Romo and Nantz, no changes at CBS
CBS is the only network that hasn’t revamped its No. 1 booth.
Returning to call games are Jim Nantz and Tony Romo, who have been paired together since 2017. They’ll be joined by sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson.
In a way, Romo might be responsible for the musical chairs we’ve seen this season. When his contract was up with CBS following the 2019 season, interest from ESPN forced CBS to pay the former Cowboys quarterback $180 million over 10 years, the largest contract in the history of sports broadcasting, even adjusted for inflation.
