Matt Millen. John Elway. John Lynch. Troy Aikman?
The Hall of Fame quarterback, who retired after the 2000 season, apparently has the itch to run an NFL team. That’s what he suggested during a recent appearance on The Doomsday Podcast from Ed Werder and Matt Mosley, via Peter King of SI.com.
“I do believe there is another frontier for me beyond television,” Aikman said.
With FOX televising the draft this year, Aikman will help cover it. As part of his preparation, he attend the Pro Day workouts conducted by USC quarterback Sam Darnold and UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen. This helped underscore Aikman’s pre-existing interest in someday running an NFL team.
Aikman joined FOX immediately after retiring, quickly becoming a member of the network’s top broadcasting team. The fact that he has stayed there for so long (even after FOX hired, to his dismay, Skip Bayless) shows how much Aikman loves what he’s doing. Still, if he’s thinking about moving on to bigger and better things, a schedule that will now include two games per week in most weeks of the NFL season may cause him to start asking himself, “Why am I doing this to myself?”
That question becomes more likely if Aikman already is thinking about something else he can potentially do to himself: Tie his name and reputation to the success or failure of an NFL team, giving up a spot he could hold for another 20 years or longer for a gig that necessarily becomes a year-to-year proposition from the first day he walks through the door.
If/when Aikman does it, he’ll join Millen, Elway, and Lynch as former players who made an unexpected right turn well after retiring, becoming key executives at a team without paying the dues that most key executives must pay before taking over.