From one of the greatest to ever play the game, to one of the best to ever call it. Troy Aikman has turned into a premiere analyst and it seemingly happened overnight. He walked off the field right into the broadcast booth and didn’t really miss a beat.
Aikman spent the first part of his youth in Cerritos, California which is between Los Angeles and Anaheim. When he was 12 the family moved to Henryetta, Oklahoma. There, Aikman played baseball and football at Henryetta High School. He earned All-State Honors. He also won a state championship in another ‘sport’, which I’ll tell you about later in the column.
His high school career led to a contract offer from the New York Mets, they wanted him to play baseball. Aikman chose football and attended Oklahoma under head coach Barry Switzer. In his first full season as a starter in 1985, he got off to a great start, but wound up breaking his ankle in a game. He was lost for the season. Jamelle Holieway took over and led the Sooners to the National Championship. Aikman decided to transfer.
He headed to UCLA, where as a junior he was named the Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Year. The awards kept on coming, as a senior he won the 1988 Davey O’Brien Award as the nation’s top quarterback. It was the first time a UCLA quarterback had won the award. Aikman would finish third in the Heisman that season. His time at UCLA got him into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008 and led to his number 8 being retired by the Bruins in 2014.
NFL CAREER
Aikman’s Hall of Fame playing career began in 1989, when the Dallas Cowboys selected him with the first overall pick in the NFL Draft. He and the Cowboys struggled early in Aikman’s career. He was 0-11 as a starter in his first season in the NFL. But things eventually got better, much better.
He spent 12 years in the league and led Dallas to wins in Super Bowls XXVII, XXVIII and XXX. He was named Super Bowl MVP in the first match up against the Bills. While at the helm of the Cowboys, the team advanced to 4 NFC Championship Games and won 6 NFC East championships.
Aikman is one of only four quarterbacks to win three Super Bowls. He finished his career throwing for just under 33,000 yards. He was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton in February of 2006.
ROAD TO ESPN
Troy Aikman retired from football after the 2000-01 season, but his broadcasting career actually started a couple of years before that. His first stint as a game analyst came during the 1998 and 2000 NFL Europe seasons. He worked for Fox Sports Net alongside Brad Sham.
Officially, after he called it quits on the field, Aikman joined Fox in 2001 where he joined Dick Stockton and former teammate Daryl Johnston to form the network’s No. 2 team. The reviews were so positive that Aikman wasn’t going to stick around the “B” booth for a long stint.
After one season in the booth, Aikman was elevated to the network’s No. 1 broadcast team alongside Joe Buck and analyst Cris Collinsworth. The rest as they say is history. Collinsworth would move on after the 2004 season and the team of Buck and Aikman would be synonymous with big games in the NFL for the next couple of decades. Troy Aikman has now been a part of twice as many Super Bowls as a broadcaster (6) than he was as a player (3).
Following the 2021-22 NFL season, Troy Aikman and Joe left Fox for ESPN to become part of a newly revamped Monday Night Football booth. This past season was their 21st together, which equals John Madden and Pat Summerall as the longest tenured booths in NFL broadcast history.
It was puzzling to many to find out that Aikman, whose contract had expired, was just allowed to walk away from a place he’d called home for 20 years. He wasn’t sure either.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Aikman said in an episode of the Sports Illustrated Media in March of 2022. “I don’t know that I ever will get the answer to that one. I think through it all, it’s a business. Fox is welcome to do whatever it is they feel is in their best interest as I am, as everybody is, so there’s no hard feelings about anything. I had a great 21 years at Fox. I guess what’s perplexing to me is that I had no conversation with my boss (Fox Sports president Eric Shanks) until he called me to congratulate me on my contract with ESPN.”
AS AN ANALYST
Aikman became one of the greatest football analysts because of his ability to ‘say it like it is’. With credentials of a Hall of Fame career behind him, usually when he criticizes it’s with good reason. Where he’s different than many other analysts with lesser or similar status, Aikman isn’t afraid to speak his mind. He doesn’t worry about, at least in the moment, who might be offended by his commentary. Aikman can back it up and isn’t that what you want from your number one analyst?
Ok, that fearlessness has gotten him in some hot water at times. This season was such a time, when Aikman was calling a Monday night game between the Raiders and Chiefs. Kansas City’s defensive lineman Chris Jones hit Raiders quarterback Derek Carr from behind forcing a fumble. But Jones but flagged for roughing the passer. Aikman didn’t agree with the call, even from a former quarterback’s standpoint. Which led to this comment.
“My hope is the competition committee looks at this in the next set of meetings and, you know, we take the dresses off,” Aikman said on the game broadcast. The comments went viral. He was called ‘sexist’ and ‘misogynistic’, and a few days later Aikman walked it back and apologized.
“My comments were dumb, just shouldn’t have made them,” Aikman said on 96.7 The Ticket in Dallas, via The Dallas Morning News. “Just dumb remarks on my part.”
While he may be controversial at times, he’s spot on with his criticisms of players, especially QBs. Case in point. Jacksonville hosted Tennessee in Week 18 with a chance to go to the playoffs. The Jaguars needed a big touchdown late to eventually win the game. But Aikman zeroed in on Trevor Lawrence, who missed some important throws that could have made things easier on Jacksonville.
The Jaguars were down 13-7 and Lawrence missed a wide-open Zay Jones in the end zone. “That one’s kinda hard to even try to explain how you can miss a guy like that. He’s just as open as you could be … he’s got 10 yards,” Aikman said. “You don’t see many misses like that in the NFL.”
A quarter later, Lawrence missed Marvin Jones Jr. on a throw down sideline. Jacksonville trailed by three at this point. Aikman didn’t mince words when he talked about how much Lawrence was letting his team down in huge moments. “If Jacksonville fails to win this game, boy, it’s going to be a long offseason, because there’s been a lot of opportunities in this game for them. They’ve left a lot of points out there on the board,” Aikman said.
When you’re watching a game, don’t you want the analyst to be that blunt? Even if it is about your own team? There’s too many buttoned up analysts that talk in generalizations. Yes, you get the gist of what they mean, but that’s pretty much it. I’m not sure if they get directives from network executives to take it easy on players or the NFL. Seems like it when you compare them to Aikman.
He may not be the flashiest guy, but I’m good with that. His delivery isn’t excitable, but that’s what the play on the field is for, and I don’t want a guy screaming at me for 3 hours. Aikman has a style, that’s pretty much his own. I hear, good information mixed in with some sarcasm, that sometimes leads to viral commentary. I’d rather hear it unfiltered and in the moment and with a calm and steady voice that drives the point home effectively.
DID YOU KNOW?
I mentioned earlier that I would tell you about Aikman’s High School State Championship in a sport other than football or baseball. Aikman won the Oklahoma State TYPING title in 1983. You heard me right. His sister was supposed to be in the competition, but bailed. She talked Troy into it, because he loved to compete in everything.
In an article in the Dallas News in 2017, Aikman was shooting a PSA to give shoutouts to a teacher that changed his life. For Aikman, it was Jean Froman, his typing teacher at Henryetta High School in Oklahoma, who mentored him in and outside the classroom.
Aikman was a sophomore and he along with several friends took Typing 1, thinking it would be an easy A. He immediately took to the class and the teacher. But after winning the title, he decided to continue on to Typing 2.
He recalled the day that his name was announced as the winner in a school assembly. “Everyone knew already that I was an athlete,” he says. “And for me to go down the aisle as the typing winner was not one of my proudest moments, although winning the award certainly meant a lot.”
He says it’s not on his resume, but maybe it should be.
