Troy Aikman ‘can’t imagine’ Travis Kelce won’t pursue TV career

Troy Aikman was a guest at Travis Kelce’s wedding this summer, but even he doesn’t know what Kelce wants a potential sports media career to look like.

He can, however, tell you there’s going to be one.

Asked during an appearance on the Sports Media with Richard Deistch podcast whether Kelce, now married to one of the most famous people on the planet, still has any interest in conventional broadcasting, Aikman said he hadn’t discussed it directly with the Chiefs tight end. But Aikman did speak with Kelce ahead of ESPN’s Week 1 Monday Night Football broadcast of Chiefs-Broncos —remotely because of his current broadcaster restrictions — and he came away convinced that Kelce’s post-playing career will include TV.

“It sounds like he wants to do television. I can’t imagine that he won’t,” Aikman said. “And I think there’s going to be a line-up of suitors for his talents, and then it’s just a matter of what exactly does he want that to look like.”

The industry has been sizing up Kelce for most of 2026. On the Marchand Sports Media podcast in January, released on Black Monday after the Chiefs missed the playoffs for the first time in 11 years, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand said Kelce “definitely could do TV” if he retired and that he’d likely want to call games. Marchand also predicted Kelce would accept only a No. 1 job, at a salary anywhere from $10 million to $20 million, which would put him ahead of far more experienced analysts like Greg Olsen, J.J. Watt, Drew Brees, and Dan Orlovsky in the pecking order.

By late February, the timeline had shifted. Marchand reported that Kelce would try to play one more season before pursuing broadcasting, and that he could command at least $15 million per year as a studio presence, while also floating him as a wild-card candidate to replace Kirk Herbstreit on Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football.

Aikman has done some recruiting of his own. Appearing on New Heights in April, he talked up ESPN to Travis while praising Jason as a colleague, prompting Travis to joke that the Worldwide Leader might be too polished for him before admitting he’d have a blast there. The catch is that ESPN’s top booth, the kind of job Kelce has said he wants, is already occupied by Aikman and Joe Buck. Or at least half of it is spoken for. Buck reportedly agreed to a six-year extension worth more than $100 million this month, keeping him on Monday Night Football through ESPN’s next two Super Bowls. Aikman, who already earns $18.5 million a year, is in the final season of his contract and told Deitsch in the same interview that he expected a new deal before the season started, noting he hadn’t gone into the last year of a contract since signing with the Cowboys. He said he’d like to keep working with Buck but stopped short of calling the decision entirely his own, and he’s shown he’s willing to move first, having left Fox for ESPN four years ago before Buck followed.

Then came July’s wedding, which offered its own round of tea-leaf reading. The Fox and Prime Video NFL teams were heavily represented on the guest list, as was a strong ESPN contingent that included Buck, Rich Eisen, Pat McAfee, Stephen A. Smith, and Jason Kelce. Fox still hasn’t named a full-time replacement for Jimmy Johnson in its studio, while Prime Video could have a Thursday Night Football opening with Al Michaels on a year-to-year deal and Herbstreit’s contract expiring after this season.

Which of those paths Kelce actually wants is still anyone’s guess, and Aikman, despite sitting down with him before Week 1, conceded he doesn’t know either.

“Does he want to actually call games in the booth? Is he going to be in studio? Does he want to maybe have a limited schedule to where he can still travel and watch his wife perform from time to time?” Aikman said. “I really don’t know what his interests are or what his desires are.”

“The sky’s the limit for him,” Aikman added. “I mean, he’s a really talented guy, as is his brother Jason, who we have at ESPN.”

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