Unsure of his exact location, Joe Buck could literally be any place in the world at any given moment, most likely calling an NFL game, or a game of checkers.
“I am back in the entertainment capital of the world, St. Louis, Missouri,” Buck said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
There is no bigger sportscaster in the world, and Buck chooses to live where he grew up, with his wife and children.
For reasons that are beyond my comprehension, Joe Buck is a divisive figure even though he is the best play-by-play voice in sports going.
Don’t @ me.
There is no better booth tandem in football than Buck and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman. There is no better booth tandem in baseball than Buck and former Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz.
Buck and Aikman’s 2020 NFL season ends on Sunday when they call the NFC Championship game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the host Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field.
After he chatted with Tom Brady on Wednesday, Buck was kind enough to give me some time to discuss calling games under COVID-19 conditions, on why broadcasters should embrace silence, how much longer he can keep up his schedule and his biggest on air flub.
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— Mac Engel: Are you at all enjoying calling games given the abnormality of it all with no fans, or are you ready to be done with the uniqueness of it?
— Joe Buck: I’m kind of ambivalent. For what I do, there is nothing like using a loud stadium. When I am on the couch, the last thing I want to hear are two or three announcers talking over it. Like I said before the start of the season, the fake crowd noise was going to have to be a part of a telecast. I think the networks have fine-tuned it.
We have a maestro on the controls at Fox, so it’s the home crowd booing a bad call. There is next-level stuff that makes this experience, and what I care about is the experience of the viewer.
It’s been pointed out how dumb I am, I can be tricked as I sit in an empty stadium and because I have the sound going I think it’s a packed house. I’ve referenced the crowd out of habit and I’m like, ‘You dummy. There is no one there.’
— ME: Have you called a game this season where you or Aikman said you thought the outcome would have been different had there been fans?
— JB: I just got off the phone with (Tampa Bay quarterback) Tom Brady 30 minutes ago, and he said, ‘I’m here to tell you the hardest game to win is a conference title game on the road. The wins I’m most proud of are the AFC title games on the road.’
We’re going to Green Bay, and it’s not going to be the same. There will be 8,100 fans, but that’s not the same as 81,000 where the crowd is whipped up.
And that maybe applies to last weekend with Tampa at New Orleans. That dome changes the feel of a game. It changes what a team can do at the line. I think home field has never been more irrelevant than it is in 2020.
— ME: You ...
— JB: I’m going to cut you off. In all the years I’ve been with Troy, I don’t think he has ever been better. He’s more willing now than ever to be critical. It’s never off the cuff. It’s looked at, and studied and prepared. The more I listen to him the more I think this is the best he’s ever been.
— ME: HBO’s Real Sports did a profile on you many years ago, and I recall you saying that you didn’t want to be an “old man in the booth calling games.” What exactly did you mean by that and do you still feel that way?
— JB: I do. I think it’s just life. That’s also a comment that is a lot easier to make when you’re 28 or 35, then you get to be 51. I won’t be doing this when I’m in my 100s.
I saw my dad [Jack Buck] literally give every ounce of his energy to his job, the later years to the St. Louis Cardinals. When the Cardinals dedicated a statue to him outside of Busch Stadium, and he was so funny, he said, “I’ve given the Cardinals the best years of my life, and now I’m going to give them the worst.”
He was in terrible health, but it kept him young, and it wore him out. I’ve seen that. I have two daughters, 24 and 21. I have two twin boys, who are 2 1/2.
What I said to HBO, I still stand by that, I just don’t know the definition.
— ME: Have you seen the TV commercials about taking classes not to become your parents?
— JB: Those are great, the Progressive ads.
— ME: Yes; have you had moments where you thought, ‘Oh God, I’m becoming my dad.’
— JB: I think I’m becoming my mom with my level of worry for my 2 1/2 year old twins. I don’t think I’ll ever be as carefree on or off the air like my dad. My dad was a Depression-era kid who didn’t grow up with anything. Worked his tail off to get where he (did) and beyond.
My dad just didn’t care; that’s from being shot at in World War II in Germany, and being in a Paris hospital when the war ended. His life experiences were so vast.
I think I am more in the category of Carole Buck worrying about a cough coming out of the twins’ bedroom.
— ME: Sportscasting is like anything else in that it constantly evolves, but is that much different today than it was when you started?
— JB: It depends on what you care about. What your barometer is for a successful broadcast. If you want to go social media, which is a relatively new invention, and take the temperature of how fans feel you are going to be really depressed.
You have to bring a snorkel to get through the muck. I get it. Fans have a way of verbalizing their frustrations when their team just lost. Most of the complaints [about the broadcast] are from the fans whose teams lost.
I’ve done 23 World Series, and a bunch of Super Bowls. I’ve told half of the crowd their team just lost.
There are plenty of fans who think the national [TV play-by-play] guy has it in for their team, which is just crazy. It’s made [broadcasters] hyper aware of what comes out of their mouth. There is a lot less forgiveness now.
I’m not saying anything people don’t already know, but it’s a world where people are ready to get upset. A lot of it is, “Kill the messenger.”
As far as calling the game, the nuts and bolts are the same. Ball 1 is still Ball 1. A touchdown is still a touchdown. The reaction is what’s different.
If you have a strong opinion, you better be willing to put up with what comes with that. That’s something my dad never experienced. I’m not saying it’s better or worse, it’s just different. The fun factor is still the same. It’s exciting as hell.
— ME: Vin Scully, Pat Summerall, Keith Jackson and a few others are celebrated as the best in sportscasting, due partly because they used silence. You use silence. If you are doing the No. 1 games on Fox, and we celebrate those voices as the standard, why are broadcasters afraid to be quiet?
— JB: It’s hard for me to answer because it’s going to sound like I know all the answers. I think it comes from insecurity, and that it takes guts, and I am not saying I am gutsy, but it takes some boldness not to talk.
The little voice in your head is telling you if you don’t say anything then people are going to think you don’t know who caught that touchdown, or you don’t know what’s going on.
I think network sports is more about what you don’t say than what you do say. It’s about cutting out the clutter. You are doing TV sports, which by it’s description is redundant. If they are watching, they know it’s a touchdown.
If I were to teach a class, I’d stress be confident in your own standing and not feel the urge to over talk.
— ME: What is your most memorable on air screw-up?
— JB: It comes down to two categories. There was my reaction to [Vikings receiver] Randy Moss mooning the fans in Green Bay [in 2005].
That was just how I felt in the game, and part of me thinks I’d feel the same way now. That was a piece of broadcast history. I’m good living with that.
There are the mistakes when a ball hits off the top of the wall, and the guy is still running and it’s, “Wait, it’s not a home run!”
The one that stands out is screwing up [PGA Tour golfer] Brooks Koepka’s girlfriend’s name at the end of the (2017) U.S. Open. I’ve never said the name of the guy who gave me the cards, because he always made me look 10 times smarter than I am.
But this girl kept popping up all over the place. So it’s the U.S. Open. And Koepka won. And now they are kissing. I get this card, I say the name and [color analyst] Brad Faxon says that’s the ex-girlfriend.
So then it’s, ‘OK. Good night everybody.’ We just did 52 hours a day of live golf and the last name out of my mouth is the ex-girlfriend of Brooks Koepka. Jim Nantz would never have done that.
I reached out to Brooks and apologized and he laughed about it. I apologized to her. If you can’t laugh at yourself and turn mistakes into good stories, then you’re going to have a hard time.
— ME: Rumor has it you are going to soon be joining the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
— JB: I’ll be coming through the side door or the basement.
— ME: Of your many achievements, is this the most surreal?
— JB: Totally surreal. I think the best part of it is my mom was alerted to the announcement was going to be made during the halftime of the Cleveland/Cincinnati game. She would have been watching but I don’t think she would have been watching the halftime. Don’t tell [Fox NFL studio analyst] Howie Long that.
I thought it was good that she could see her son go in and get the highest award much like her husband did [with baseball].
We are very close as a family, and while he’s been gone for 20 years to get this now was very special.
