The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported on Friday that before Joe Buck and Troy Aikman clashed in the SoFi Stadium booth ahead of the Oct. 12 Bills-Rams Monday Night Football game, Aikman sat down with ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro for a tense, hour-long conversation about the fracture with his longtime partner and whether the duo had any future together at all...

quote:
“It all started week one,” said a contractor on the MNF team. “He was dogging the crew and gear on the air when he couldn’t figure his telestrator out. He couldn’t figure it out because he shows up on game day. Didn’t practice. So before halftime, our director had already gotten operations to call someone at Fox, find out exactly what model he used for years prior, and had it shipped in for the next game.”

The sources that spoke with Awful Announcing said that whether Aikman was involved in the leadership change or not, they felt as though there didn’t appear to be any concern for how that decision might impact the rest of the MNF production team.

“It’s a huge bummer,” said the contractor. “What [Aikman] and the suits at ESPN don’t realize is the impact it has downstream on everyone else.”

“I think there is a lot of people who would talk but likely won’t because they fear of a potential target being put on their backs by ESPN,” said another source on the MNF team. “But a lot of those people are so upset.”

The telestrator incident was part of a larger pattern of behavior in the eyes of some on the MNF crew. Unlike previous MNF broadcasting talents, crewmembers felt as though Aikman was not as forthcoming in ingratiating himself into the team. Several sources said he also spent minimal amounts of time in whichever city that week’s game was going to be in, cutting down on opportunities to pre-plan, practice, and interact with the team.

“Troy travels on his private jet on Monday mornings and flies home after the game,” said a source. “He could not be further removed from the crew and I would confidently say that he knows maybe 10 people on a crew of like 150+ people.”

“Never came to a camera meeting. No crew outings. Nothing. You’d think someone who is going into a long-term, big-money contract at a new network would come in and try to make it home. Not at all,” said another source.

…

Crew members also reported that Aikman would frequently “yell at everyone in the truck when he wasn’t getting what he wanted,” further widening the growing rift between the MNF crew and himself. On its own, a heated disagreement in a production truck isn’t especially shocking or novel, but crew members say that it only added to the dissonance between the two sides.