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After a dozen years in the NFL and three Super Bowl titles, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and current FOX broadcaster Troy Aikman retired after the 2000 season for health reasons.
Despite some reports at the time that he quit his playing days due to the number of concussions he suffered during his career, which luckily did not cause a serious problem at the Temple of fame, Aikman actually retired due to persistent back problems.
Two years before his retirement, however, Troy Aikman went through another health scare that few people knew about, which he really wasn’t comfortable talking about for a long time.
Troy Aikman played 12 years for the Dallas Cowboys
For those who may not be old enough to remember Troy Aikman’s playing days with the Dallas Cowboys, do yourself a favor and come back for a video.
Drafted No.1 overall in the 1989 NFL Draft, Aikman and the Cowboys struggled to reach a 1-15 record in his freshman, which was also Jerry Jones’ first year as an owner. and Jimmy Johnson’s first year as a head coach, at least at the pro level.
But gradually, the franchise began to add pieces around Aikman and the Cowboys became the most dominant team in the NFL a few years later. Dallas won three Super Bowls titles in four years of the early to mid-1990s, and Aikman won the Super Bowl MVP title in the Cowboys’ first title game against the Buffalo Bills.
Troy Aikman scored 90 victories as a starting quarterback in the 1990s, the third of all quarterbacks in the decade, and has already made six consecutive Pro Bowl appearances. The former UCLA star was hampered by injuries during his later years in Dallas, but still holds numerous franchise records. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006 and is also a member of the famous Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor.
Troy Aikman was diagnosed with stage two melanoma in 1998
In 1998, Troy Aikman got out of the shower and noticed a dark spot on the back of his shoulder that he had never seen before. He didn’t think too much about it at first, but on a family trip to Hawaii a few weeks later, he asked his sisters, both nurses, about it and they recommended he get it checked out the most. early as possible.
Aikman went to the dermatologist shortly thereafter and was told he had stage two melanoma. Fortunately, he was discovered before the cancer had a chance to spread and he was able to avoid radiation or chemotherapy, but his doctors told him how bad things could have gotten and that he should. take better precautions when in the sun, the same advice Aikman has been giving people for a few years now.
He remained relatively silent on his diagnosis for almost two decades
RELATED: Why Troy Aikman Almost Quitting FOX In His First Year Working With Joe Buck
Following his diagnosis in 1998, Troy Aikman did a few interviews in Dallas about how he got the biopsy, but it never turned into a very big story. In an interview with People in 2016, Aikman said his “melanoma experience was very personal” and that he wasn’t too interested in sharing his story for very long.
But over the years, he began to realize the number of lives affected and lost by melanoma each year. One of those people was his good friend and longtime NFL assistant coach Jim Johnson (not the Dallas Cowboys head coach), who announced in January 2009 that he was undergoing treatment for melanoma. . Unfortunately, his cancer advanced and he died six months later.
In the years since his diagnosis, Aikman had an exam every six months or so, and although he froze suspicious growths, as he told Healthline, no other spots of melanoma were found. . After years of keeping his diagnosis a relative secret, he partnered with Novartis, a global healthcare company, for the “Melanoma Just Got Personal” campaign when he shared his story with People and continued to share this story in the years that followed in an effort to raise awareness about skin cancer.
Statistics provided by Pro Football Reference
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