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A year after questions swirled around Tom Brady over a potential conflict of interest as both a TV analyst and minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, Troy Aikman could soon fall under a similar spotlight due to his ongoing connection to the Miami Dolphins’ front office.
But the Hall of Fame quarterback wants to make one thing clear: This is far from the first time he’s dealt with a conflict of interest while serving as a color commentator.
“I’ve been doing it for 25 years, and I have friendships every week that I call a game, whether it’s a head coach or an offensive coordinator or a player, or whoever it is,” Aikman said in an appearance on retired Dallas-area broadcaster Dale Hansen’s show “Dallas Dialogue with Dale.”
“I would argue that every broadcaster has a conflict when they’re calling a game.”
The Dolphins hired Aikman as a consultant to aid in their search for a new general manager this past offseason. After Aikman advised in the team’s hiring of Jon-Eric Sullivan as GM and Jeff Hafley as head coach, the Dolphins kept the longtime broadcaster in the mix with the organization’s front office.
With Aikman returning this fall as ESPN’s top color commentator, Hansen asked him if his involvement with Miami could lead to a conflict of interest.
“I get it, and I’ve talked to the commissioner,” Aikman said to Hansen. “He’s fine with what I’m doing and my role. But I think that anyone that’s behind a mic that’s calling a game, there’s a conflict of interest because you have relationships in this business.
“… How that plays in — and I’ll just be very transparent. I mean, I don’t know if I’ll come out right away and say, ‘Hey, I’ve been involved in doing this,’ because it’ll be a year from now, but I think as long as you’re up front with the viewer and let them know the deal, then they can take away from that whether or not you’re biased in your analysis.”
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Brady was the subject of similar scrutiny after he accepted a role as Fox’s lead color analyst and later became a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders.
In 2024, during Brady’s rookie season as an analyst, the league implemented the “Brady Rules” as guardrails between his roles as a minority owner and broadcaster, which included a ban on attending production meetings with coaches leading up to calling a game. The rules were initially suspended when Brady was on the call for the Super Bowl at the end of his first season in the booth. By the time his second season began last year, the rules had been eliminated.
In an early-season edition of his weekly newsletter last season, Brady pushed back against the idea that there may be a conflict between his two roles.
“I love football. At its core it is a game of principles,” Brady wrote. “And with all the success it has given me, I feel I have a moral and ethical duty to the sport; which is why the point where my roles in it intersect is not actually a point of conflict, despite what the paranoid and distrustful might believe.”
The conflict-of-interest element has multiple sides. There is the side that Aikman addressed, about whether his connections around the league would or wouldn’t influence how he does his job as a broadcaster. If there was any question whether Aikman’s role with the Dolphins would prevent him from being critical of the team, he shot that down pretty quickly.
“The Dolphins are not expected to be very good this year,” Aikman said. “They’re getting out of cap hell, so there’s no Monday Night (Football) game with the Dolphins this year.”
Another side of the discussion is how Aikman’s role as a broadcaster, and the tools and resources that come with it, could give the Dolphins an advantage other teams don’t have. Aikman did not address that side, but it followed Brady much of last season. That included when Brady was on the call for multiple Seattle Seahawks postseason games before the Raiders hired Seattle’s offensive coordinator, Klint Kubiak, to be their new head coach.
In the interview with Hansen, Aikman shared how his role with the Dolphins originated. He said he received a call in December from Daniel Sillman, the son-in-law of Dolphins owner Stephen Ross.
“(The Dolphins) were in need of a general manager,” Aikman said. “I guess (Sillman) reached out to a number of people and asked who they felt could help them in their search. My name kept coming up, so he reached out and asked if I’d be willing to help. I told them that I would, and the reason I did is because I’ve been asked a lot over the years if I had any interest in being a general manager.
“I always thought that’s what I would do when I retired, quite honestly. I thought I’d get involved in a front office, and then things didn’t happen, for various reasons. But this provided me an opportunity to kind of get involved.”
Aikman said he was initially concerned that he wouldn’t be able to give the Dolphins what they wanted from him as a consultant. After a few days of thinking it over and talking to others, Aikman decided to give it a shot. He spoke highly of the Dolphins’ decision to hire Sullivan as general manager and Hafley as coach, as well as of Ross as a team owner.
Aikman also said that, despite enjoying the new role in a part-time capacity, he has no immediate plans to leave the booth.
“I’m enjoying my broadcasting career as much as I ever have, so it doesn’t afford me the time that I think it would require if I were to give the Dolphins more than what I’ve given them up to this point. But I am a resource for them. No official title,” Aikman said.
“Who knows, maybe that might change at some point when I decide to walk away from broadcasting and if I still want to get involved and stay involved with an NFL team. But I’ve really enjoyed it.”
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