One of the biggest sea changes in sports media history is now official as Joe Buck and Troy Aikman have left FOX to join ESPN.
Buck and Aikman, who spent the past 20 years as Fox Sports’ lead NFL broadcast team, have officially joined ESPN as the new voices of Monday Night Football. The duo, which called six Super Bowl games for FOX, replaces the trio of Steve Levy, Louis Riddick and Brian Griese on MNF.
Buck had been the face of Fox Sports, joining the organization in its first year — and his 25th — in 1994. In addition to his NFL role, he called a whopping 24 World Series for FOX, including every single Fall Classic this century. Though identified with FOX, Buck had pre-existing connections to ESPN by way of his wife, ESPN reporter Michelle Beisner-Buck.
Aikman spent his entire career with Fox, joining the network fresh from retirement in 2001.
The duo of Buck and Aikman is easily the highest-profile Monday Night Football team since the days of Al Michaels and John Madden on ABC from 2002-06. It marks the fifth different MNF booth in the past seven years. Since Mike Tirico left ESPN for NBC in 2016, ESPN used Sean McDonough and Jon Gruden for two seasons, Joe Tessitore and Booger McFarland for two seasons (joined by Jason Witten for one ill-fated year) and then Levy, Riddick and Griese. One imagines Buck and Aikman — who have agreed to five-year contracts worth a combined $30 million, per multiple reports — will last more than two seasons.
Going back further, it can be argued that Buck and Aikman represent one of the most accomplished MNF booths in series history. Perhaps only Michaels and Madden in the 2000s, Michaels, Dan Dierdorf and Frank Gifford in the 1990s and the Howard Cosell, Don Meredith and Gifford trio of the 1970s rank higher on paper.
The addition of Buck and Aikman does not impact ESPN’s ballyhooed Manningcasts — the Peyton and Eli Manning-led alternate presentations on ESPN2 — which will continue another three seasons (ESPN and Peyton’s production company agreed to tack on an extra season earlier this year). Nor will it impact the remaining MNF incumbents, with sideline reporter Lisa Salters, producer Phil Dean and director Jimmy Platt all slated to return.
It should be noted that the door is not necessarily closed on Levy and Riddick (Griese has left ESPN for a role with the San Francisco 49ers). This coming season, ESPN will have three weeks in which it airs multiple games, up from just one last season. (Starting in 2023, ESPN will have five multiple-game weeks per season). With Kirk Herbstreit heading to Amazon for NFL coverage — he will remain with ESPN for college football — there will likely be an opening for a new secondary team.
[News from ESPN, salary info from Sports Business Journal 3.14]
