Andrew Marchand says Troy Aikman still has a 95% chance of calling 's Super Bowl LXI broadcast with Joe Buck in February, even after their reported falling-out became public. He put the chance of Aikman missing the game at just 5% on a recent episode of The Varsity podcast with John Ourand.
That forecast is why the story has stayed alive. Buck and Aikman remain the pair most closely tied to 's top NFL booth, and the Super Bowl assignment is the biggest test of whether the network keeps them together after the dispute that followed Buck's extension report. Marchand's point was simple: the odds still favor both men showing up for the same broadcast, even if the relationship off the air has clearly frayed.
The break traced back to reporting that Buck had signed an extension without Aikman knowing about it. That deal was later reported to have been finalized in the spring, and Aikman felt betrayed that Buck had not told him. In the booth last month, the exchange turned blunt. Buck asked, “You are not going to f*cking talk to me?” Buck also said, “I’m not the reason you don’t have a contract,” before Aikman shot back, “I just never thought you’d do it to me.”
What makes the situation harder to dismiss is that Buck and Aikman have still completed two Monday Night Football broadcasts since the feud first broke into public view. They have done the work professionally, even as Marchand described the situation as ugly and suggested the conversation could force to put the two in a room and sort it out internally. His view was that public reporting can cut either way: it can settle the issue, or it can make the whole thing worse.
For, the timing matters because Aikman's own contract situation has not been resolved, and Super Bowl LXI sits at the center of that uncertainty. Marchand's 95% call leaves only a narrow opening for the broadcast team to split before February. If keeps Buck and Aikman together for the Super Bowl, the network will have shown it can separate the business from the blowup. If it does not, the fracture will have moved from an uncomfortable booth dynamic to a decision about one of the company's biggest NFL stages.
