Troy Aikman says his fiery Doug Gottlieb tweet drew calls from Fox Sports bosses
"They respected the fact that I was honest."
Back in August, Andrew Luck shocked the NFL world when he announced his retirement just weeks before turning 30. Amid the reaction to the news, Fox Sports personality Doug Gottlieb took a swipe at Luck’s decision as “the most millennial thing ever.”
Sports fans understandably ripped Gottlieb for the tweet, and Gottlieb even doubled down on his point. But the most noteworthy criticism of Gottlieb came from one of his own colleagues at Fox Sports.
Fox NFL analyst Troy Aikman destroyed Gottlieb with a tweet that took a pronounced dig at FS1 as well.
Given that Aikman works for Fox, it would have been reasonable to expect that his Fox Sports bosses weren’t pleased to see their top NFL talent stomp all over FS1 and someone else employed by Fox. And guess what … you’d be right.
The higher-ups at Fox did indeed call Aikman to talk about the tweet. He said in the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast with Jimmy Traina, via Awful Announcing:
“I received a couple phone calls, yes, from some of my bosses. I’m not real active on Twitter, I was out of town in my hotel room, and I was bored. I thought I’ll get on here and see what’s happening on Twitter. I had some replies, and usually I only get those when people are screaming about my broadcasting, but I hadn’t called a game in a while, so I’m like I don’t know what’s going on. What happened was Doug had sent out his tweet, and some people had copied me on it when they were replying, they were saying all the pain I’d dealt with in my career and I’d hung in there. So I’m thinking, well, what was said? I went and saw what Doug had said, and it just really struck a nerve with me, for several reasons.”
He continued to say that his bosses were understanding:
“Well, I’m still working. When you say that much trouble I don’t know exactly what that means. I don’t know about untouchable. I will say that over the years I just try to be honest, and I don’t go looking to jump into the fray by any means. But if I have an opinion on something and I feel strongly on something then I’ll say it, and whatever the consequences are they are. I have great bosses.
“And I will tell you they were great in how they handled it, not because they handled it the way I wanted them to handle it, I think they were very direct with me and honest, and I’ve always respected those kinds of people. They respected the fact that I was honest, they did not like that I would say something about the company. I understand that, and I appreciate the way they discussed it with me.”
They also didn’t make him delete the tweet, which still remains on his Twitter page.