For the past two and a half decades (save for 1997 and 1999), Joe Buck has been the World Series. For nearly a quarter of that time, he has also been the Super Bowl as well. Those are undeniable facts! Love him or hate him, it’s the absolute truth!
It’s been reported all this week that Joe Buck will be leaving Fox and is joining Troy Aikman (who has been his partner for two decades along with those six Super Bowls he announced) where he will now be doing Monday Night Football games on ESPN. The duo who have already been abducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame will be coming together once again to do weekly NFL games along with providing exclusive content for ESPN +.
This can been seen as both a shocker but also something that we could have all seen coming. Aikman had already left Fox a couple of weeks prior to join ESPN as he revealed that Fox didn’t offer him an extension. Buck, on the other hand, had at least one year left on his contract which would have ended after next year’s Super Bowl. He has also gone on record saying how much of an exhausting experience it can be with announcing games and constantly needing to travel over and over again, especially in October where he has to do Thursday Night and Sunday Afternoon games for the NFL along with the League Championship Series and the World Series for the MLB. However, it seems as though the two sides came to a mutual agreement and decided to go their separate ways a year prior to his expiration.
It hasn’t been 100% confirmed who’s going to replace Buck for both baseball and football games for Fox. Recent reports have claimed that the favorites to succeed Joe include Kevin Burkhardt for the NFL and Joe Davis for the MLB. We still have yet to have absolute confirmation from Fox but there was absolute confirmation earlier yesterday from the Buckster (I promise that’s the only time I will call him that) himself on his Twitter that he has officially sign on to join ESPN for Monday Night Football.
I don’t know or am gonna pretend to know what went on from behind the scenes at Fox to why this big move was made but I do know one thing, sports will never be the same again now.
Personally, I like Joe Buck. He may not be the most exciting or the most enthusiastic sports announcer out there but he is one that keeps it real and doesn’t come across as tryhard. He always know exactly what to say at the exact moment and always know when to let the game itself do the talking. He has a dry sense of humor but knows when to add a bit of levity to the booth. He is always someone that whenever you hear that he’s going to announce a particularly game, you know damn well that it’s going to be a big one. He also just has a special deep raspy voice that was just absolutely MADE for broadcasting!
Also, he once called a touchdown while taking a piss! How can you not love the man?!
(There was also that time where he called an NFL game AND a NLCS game on the exact same way!)
Link: https://www.si.com/more-sports/2012/10/15/joe-buck-tomlinson-tebow
It has become the popular opinion among sports fans to hate Joe Buck. Whenever he’s announcing a game, you always see his name trending on Twitter and at least 90% of the time, the tweets aren’t very friendly. The criticism that you always hear from them is that Joe Buck is too biased, boring, talks too much, constantly repeats himself, and always tends to state the obvious.
(And there was also that one time where he seemed to have a vendetta against Randy Moss for “twerking”.)
I’ll admit I do have more specific reasons to like Joe Buck than most. Part of it is because I’ve lived near St. Louis (where Joe himself lives) my whole life and have heard him multiple times announce games for my favorite baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals. There was also my parents who grew up with his father Jack Buck being the voice of the Cardinals (We can never forget Jack’s iconic line from the 1982 World Series) and have seen Joe himself grow to becoming the biggest sports broadcaster on the planet when he started his career with booth duties here in St. Louis. And there was also that one time where I got his autograph when he signed my copy of his book, Lucky Bastard. It’s perfectly fair to claim I have my own personal bias for Joe Buck but I do think he is better than many sports fan give him credit for.
(There was also that one time where he stopped in the booth during a Blues game and announced that for about five minutes.)
Firstly, about 99% of the criticism that is always thrown at Joe Buck can be honestly apply to nearly every single sport announcer out there. With some very few exceptions (mostly just the incredible and extremely vocabulary hockey booth legend Doc Emrick), sports announcers always tend to fall into those similar trappings as Buck always get accused of. There’s always going to be moments of biased because that team who the announcers are “biased” towards is reflecting their overall love and passion for the kind of game that they are broadcasting. There’s always going to be moments of repetition and stating the obvious because they always have to keep the audience up-to-date on every single important concrete detail imaginable so that anyone who is just joining in the game itself will not be lost. Lastly, it’s a very difficult to constantly keep talking for several hours straight and getting little to no time to take a break or even get a cup of water to clear your throat. It’s understandable for an announcer to be exhausted or even bored on occasions. These sort of critiques are ones that you can apply to any announcer yet it’s always seems like Joe Buck himself that gets those critiques thrown at him more than most. Sure, he’s arguably the biggest sports broadcaster out there but it’s always seems like as those sports fans consider Joe Buck to be a scapegoat to what’s wrong with sports broadcasting nowadays when in actual reality, that’s just how it has been going on in the sports booth for a really long time.
Every sports broadcaster has their own style and formula that they follow. Buck, admittedly, has that more than most announcers out there but that’s what makes him good, popular, and all around, a class act. He never acts like he is above anyone and even has no problem calling himself out with various infamous calls he has made. He treats each game exactly the way it is suppose to be without trying to make it all about himself. He knows what every single viewer who is watching is there for, it is there for the big game that he is getting paid big bucks to talk about for a certain amount of time. Is he the greatest ever? Probably not, but he’s far from the worst and you most likely won’t find anyone bigger than him for at least a good long while.
But yet, things are about to change drastically for sports out there. For the first time since 1999, someone else will be the voice of the World Series. For the first time since god knows how long, someone else will be the voice for Fox when they get their turn at the Super Bowl less than a year from now. For the first time in a long time (at least until 2027 when ESPN will get their chance at broadcasting the Bowl itself), there will be no Joe Buck to lead the charge to any big game event other than for some Monday night ball action. There’s a chance that things will be different at some point but for now, that’s how things are going to be.
You don’t have to love Joe Buck or even like him, as many people have demonstrated for the past several years but there’s no denying that things will be different without him broadcasting live sport events for Fox. During the 21st century, one man has been the face of the World Series and Saturday afternoon/night baseball games for Fox. Whether he’s with the booth with Tim McCarver, John Smoltz, Harold Reynolds, Tom Verducci or whoever, he has always had some sort of presence there. Now, that presence has vanished along with his football duo, Troy Aikman. They both have vanished into thin air and now have found themselves a new home.
No matter who ends up replacing Joe Buck for Fox, they will have quiet a legacy to inherit for many years to come.
Here’s a clip of Joe Buck’s arguably most iconic call, one which he echoed from his father.
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