Troy Aikman Leaving FOX for Amazon TV? Cowboys Icon Reveals Thoughts
FRISCO - Could Dallas Cowboys Hall-of-Fame quarterback Troy Aikman be changing TV jobs?
“Maybe,” Aikman said this weekend to SI. “I’m not sure where all that might lead or how things end up.''
Amazon is taking over the NFL’s Thursday Night Football broadcasts next year, and the company reportedly wants to make a gigantic move involving its announcing lineup.
And including Aikman would be gigantic.
According to Mike McCarthy of Front Office Sports, Amazon is targeting Aikman as its game analyst for Thursday Night Football, starting next season, with the idea of creating a TV "dream team.''
“If Amazon is able to land Aikman, the Pro Football Hall of Famer would likely team with play-by-play announcer Al Michaels to form a ‘TNF’ dream team,'” McCarthy writes.
Aikman, the three-time Super Bowl-winning Cowboys QB, has been the lead analyst for FOX’s NFL game coverage for the last 20 years, working alongside Joe Buck. Michaels, meanwhile, works down the street as the play-by-play man for Sunday Night Football on NBC, working with Cris Collinsworth.
Michaels is reportedly “90-percent likely” to take the Amazon job.
And Aikman? First of all, he's 100-percent likely to earn a monumental paycheck for this, surely making him the highest-paid guy in his field. Tony Romo, another former Cowboys QB working for CBS Sports, reportedly makes $20 million annually.
If Aikman did take the Amazon job, it is possible that he could also continue on working games at FOX - though Aikman has stated many times that given the work he puts in, doing one game a week is a full-time job.
This news also reinforces the idea that we've written about often, after conversations with Aikman, regarding the idea of him moving into an NFL team's front office. He would certainly be capable, and would even be willing to serve a sort of "internship,'' with money not the issue. But a chance to help "reinvent'' how football is done on TV, via Amazon, and to get paid in excess of $20 million annually to do it?
"Right now I’m just focused on Fox,'' Aikman said. I do know this. I love working for Fox. I love the people I work for. I love the people I work with. ... I’ve been really fortunate. It’s kind of a mom-and-pop-type operation. I don’t know that it’s that way at other networks. ... So I’ve enjoyed that. Now where it might lead with Amazon, I’m aware of those conversations, as well. I guess time will tell.”
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