The past week in sports media has essentially been Joe Buck Week and, really, what a seven days it has been.
Going into last weekend, news of Buck leaving Fox for ESPN and Monday Night Football dropped. On Wednesday, ESPN officially announced Buck and Troy Aikman as its new MNF broadcast team. Hours later, Buck was eliminated and revealed on The Masked Singer, which turned out to be a bizarre farewell to his tenure at Fox.
In another example of timing so perfect that it almost seems orchestrated, Buck’s weekly podcast with Oliver Hudson, Daddy Issues, posted its regular Thursday episode and the broadcaster was ready to talk about the whirlwind events of the past week and the absurdity of how events played out.
Buck revealed that he will start at ESPN on May 1 which, as he put it, means he’s technically unemployed for the next seven weeks.
“After 27 years at Fox, my goodbye on-air, on the network, is me singing dressed as a ram,” said Buck. “As the Masked Singer, as a larger-than-life Roman soldier guy.
“It only proves how fast the deal with ESPN happened… that was shot the week after the NFC championship game, which happened to be in L.A. I mean, it couldn’t have worked out any better. And I had no idea that was going to be my last moments at Fox. But those are my last moments at Fox.”
According to Buck, his wife, ESPN reporter Michelle Beisner, “got into a wee bit of trouble” by revealing the move to ESPN on Instagram before any official announcement had been made and some people who probably needed to be notified had received word. (Although the New York Post‘s Andrew Marchand may have broken the news first.)
Buck then recounted the machinations involved in getting out of the final year of his Fox contract to sign with ESPN. Much of this has already been reported, but it’s still intriguing to hear Buck’s perspective on this and his gratitude for network executives letting him out of his deal for a “quality of life” move that would be really beneficial to his family.
“I think what Fox realized… they didn’t want me to go, they have a Super Bowl this year, they have a Super Bowl in two more years, so they have two of the next three Super Bowls,” said Buck. “I’ve done it, so they have experience with me and I was signed through this year knowing that the Super Bowl was there.
“So Fox had to be really… for lack of a better word, kind and let me out of the deal because this bus was coming along one time. And if I didn’t get on it, I may never get on it.”
Buck went on to explain that the original plan was for Aikman to at least do half a season with him at Fox, while he also called Thursday Night Football on Amazon, followed by the postseason and Super Bowl. But those negotiations broke down, giving ESPN the opportunity to swoop in and sign him.
Then ESPN asked Aikman if he thought Buck might be willing to come with him, and that started the sequence of events leading to one of the biggest moves sports media has seen in recent memory, changing NFL broadcast coverage for two networks. Buck met with Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks and president of production Brad Zager and worked the situation out to everyone’s satisfaction.
The entire podcast is worth listening to, which includes Buck hinting that he knows what Fox will do to replace him. And he indicates pretty strongly that the network will make the internal moves of moving Kevin Burkhardt up to the No. 1 NFL play-by-play position and Joe Davis to lead voice of MLB and World Series broadcasts.
Daddy Issues is available on the show’s website, iHeartRadio, and your podcast app of choice including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Ian Casselberry is a sports media columnist for BSM. He has previously written and edited for Awful Announcing, The Comeback, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. You can find him on Twitter @iancass or reach him by email at iancass@gmail.com.
