Listen to FOX's Troy Aikman show off his pipes on some country tunes
1. I'm so sorry, Troy. I had no choice. I had to do this.
Fox Sports' outstanding lead NFL analyst, Troy Aikman, was nice enough to come on this week's SI Media Podcast.
For most of the podcast, we talked about a variety of NFL topics, with Aikman offering excellent insight on why Tom Brady and Drew Brees have been able to have so much success for so long. (Aikman and Joe Buck will call Sunday's Bucs-Saints divisional playoff game.)
He also explained why he thinks individual franchises, even more than the NFL at large, deserve credit for completing the season during a pandemic, expanded on his comments from last week about Aaron Donald's being the best defensive player he's ever seen and shared his thoughts on how he would've handled broadcasting the controversial Washington-Philadelphia season finale.
However, Troy's biggest revelation came during the final five minutes of the podcast. Here's how the exchange went down:
Jimmy Traina: Aaron Rodgers just revealed he’s going to guest host Jeopardy! soon. Would you wanna do that job for a week?
Troy Aikman: Yeah, probably not. Probably not.
JT: Is there a game show Troy Aikman would like to guest host for a week?
TA: Nothing comes to mind offhand. Aaron’s been on Jeopardy!. He won Celebrity Jeopardy! Maybe had I been on it, I’d feel a little differently.
You know, they always say "stay in your lane." I kind of like my lane, Jimmy. I try to stay in it. Not to say that over the years, I’ve been asked to do cameos and Jerry Maguire and different things. I’ve done a country and Western album. It was awful. I don’t even know if they call it "country and Western" anymore. It was a country album, I should say.
JT: What year did you do that? Were you playing, or was it after your playing days?
TA: It was when I was playing.
JT: I gotta find that. I gotta go on YouTube and look that up.
TA: Please don’t.
I did one after our first Super Bowl, a bunch of us Cowboys, [Jay] Novacek, Joe Avezzano, our special teams coach, and some other people did it, Randy White. And then in the mid ‘90s toward the end of my career, I did a song with Waylon Jennings and did another one with Toby Keith. Not that I’ve ever aspired to be a singer. I can’t sing at all. But just some opportunities that come up and you say, "Yeah, let’s do it." You never know when these things might come up again, so you do them."
I had no idea about Aikman's past as a country singer. I even texted a few people in the NFL world to find out whether they knew about it, and they all said no.
As I told Troy, I was torn about how to handle this enormous news. Do I risk having one of the top analysts in all of sports never coming on the SI Media Podcast ever again or do I take care of my Traina Thoughts readers and SI Media Podcast listeners?
After much thought, I'm going with B.
Here are Aikman and his Dallas teammates singing "Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy." I'm pretty sure that's Aikman coming in at the 56-second mark with the standard country music line, "Traded his Mercedes for a pickup and headed for the bars down South."
But this right here is the gold. Here's Aikman doing the honors solo on the oh-so-catchy "Oklahoma Nights."
I have no idea who won the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance Grammy the year this song was recorded, but I know it wasn’t Aikman. After listening to "Oklahoma Nights," it's clear to me that he was robbed.
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher and Google Play.
You can also watch the podcast on YouTube.
2. Continuing with the theme of NFL quarterbacks and singing, someone on Reddit unearthed this video of Baker Mayfield lip-synching and dancing to Katy Perry's "California Gurls," and it's truly something else.
3. Here's some good news for Rockets fans. If you would like to part ways with your James Harden jersey, you can get a free car wash.
4. This would obviously hit differently if the Bears had beaten the Saints last Sunday, but Chicago defensive lineman Akiem Hicks was miked up for the game and gave us some good stuff.
5. I just wanna be able to get, like, $100 for all my Ken Griffey Jr. 1989 Upper Deck rookie cards.
6. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: I meant to mention this last week and totally forgot. Last Sunday marked the 22nd anniversary of the first Sopranos episode on HBO. That means it's time to rewatch the best scene from the episode.
7. SPORTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: Three years ago today, the Minneapolis Miracle took place, and I still say this is the greatest call of Joe Buck's career.
Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Stitcher. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.