David Moulton has died at 59, and Troy Aikman is mourning the loss of the man he called his right-hand man in the broadcast booth since 2018. Aikman said the two had started with a professional relationship that grew into a friendship he cherished, and he added that Moulton would be missed deeply.
The tribute landed on Saturday, October 24, when Moulton’s wife, Julie, announced that he had died while in hospice care at the Douglas Center for Caring. She said he had battled stage four renal cell cancer for six years, and that it had metastasized to his bones two years ago, even as he kept trying new treatments and kept fighting.
That detail gives the loss its full weight. Moulton was not only a voice in the booth with Aikman and Joe Buck. He was the person behind the scene who helped keep an NFL broadcast moving, the spotter who tracks the field, identifies players and helps the announcers stay one step ahead of the action. Aikman’s message made clear that role mattered to him, but it also showed how much more Moulton had become over time.
Julie’s account of his final days cuts against any easy ending. She described him as a warrior who never stopped fighting, but the disease had already spread, and hospice care marked the point where treatment could no longer change the outcome. She also said Moulton had publicly discussed his diagnosis in 2020, after discovering a large cancerous tumor around his kidney and undergoing surgery to remove his left kidney.
Moulton’s death closes a career that began long before the booth. He moved to Southwest Florida in 1999 and started as a television sports anchor at ABC-7, then worked in local radio in 2000 and became the radio play-by-play voice of Florida Gulf Coast University athletics when the program began in 2002. His work covered basketball, baseball and softball before he became a fixture beside major NFL broadcasters.
For Aikman, the loss is personal and immediate. For everyone who knew Moulton only through the broadcast, the harder truth is that one of the people who made those games work is gone, and the goodbye now belongs to a family, a booth and a sport that relied on him for years.
