Joe Buck is reportedly getting a new six-year, $108 million contract from ESPN. Which comes out to $18 million a year to call Monday Night Football.
Good for Joe. Seriously. I like Joe Buck. I know that sometimes feels like admitting you enjoy airport food. Buck has been one of those broadcasters people have loved to hate for years. Every fan base seems convinced he hates their team specifically, which is probably proof he’s doing something right.
$108 million? It got me thinking about something bigger than Buck.
When did we decide national announcers were worth this much money?
Football Frenzy
Tony Romo helped blow the doors off the market in 2019 when CBS gave him a deal worth roughly $18 million per year. Troy Aikman eventually landed at ESPN for a reported $18 million annually. Tom Brady’s mammoth FOX Sports deal averages $37.5 million per year, although Brady is something different. He’s a football savant packaged like a GQ cover model, global celebrity and corporate brand.
FOX Sports didn’t just hire an analyst. It bought the Brady marquee.
I respect the craft. I’ve spent most of my adult life talking into a microphone, so I’m probably the last person who should argue broadcasters are overpaid. Pay us all more. I’m very pro-broadcaster inflation, but here’s the problem. I’ve never watched an NFL game because Joe Buck was calling it. I’ve also never turned one off because he was.
That’s where national broadcasts are different from local ones.
In San Francisco, where I’ve spent much of my career, Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper aren’t simply the guys calling Giants games. They’re part of the Giants. Krukow is retiring after this season following 36 years alongside Kuiper. If ‘Kruk’ ran for mayor of San Francisco tomorrow, he’d win in a landslide with Kuip as his running mate.
Local baseball and basketball announcers spend 100-plus nights a year with you. They’re in your living room when your team is great, terrible and playing a meaningless Tuesday night game in Milwaukee. Eventually, you aren’t just watching the team. You’re watching the game with them.
The NFL doesn’t work that way. If the 49ers are playing the Cowboys on Sunday afternoon, I’m watching if MrBeast and Snoop Dogg are calling the game.
Buck Stops Here
Buck isn’t selling me the game. Neither are Jim Nantz or Kevin Burkhardt. They’re excellent at what they do, but they aren’t in the top 10 reasons why I turned it on.
I might make an exception for Kevin Harlan because I have a broadcasting man-crush on Kevin Harlan. I’m comfortable admitting it. Harlan could call two squirrels fighting over a French fry in a dark parking lot, and I’d probably stick around through the commercial break. But even Harlan isn’t why I turned on the game. He’s the icing. The NFL is the cake.
I also have a history with the public’s complicated relationship with Buck. I was covering Game 1 of the 2012 World Series in San Francisco when Pablo Sandoval hit three home runs against the Tigers. At some point that night, with Sandoval doing something historic on baseball’s biggest stage, a “Joe Buck sucks” chant broke out at the game.
Think about that. Sandoval had just joined Babe Ruth. Reggie Jackson and Albert Pujols as the only players at the time to hit three home runs in a World Series game. Yet, thousands of people decided this was also a good time to light up the national play-by-play guy.
That same postseason, FOX Sports even turned Buck’s schedule into part of the show. He called a 49ers game at Candlestick Park and then took a cable car across San Francisco to then-AT&T Park to call Game 1 of the NLCS that night.
The guy was everywhere.
Maybe that’s why people grew tired of him. Maybe it’s his dry delivery, or being the son of legendary broadcaster Jack Buck and the inevitable nepotism conversation. Or, maybe America just needs somebody to complain about.
Whatever the reason, I’ve always liked him. He’s smart, polished, funny when he wants to be and knows when to get out of the way of a moment. But I still wouldn’t choose a game because he’s calling it. That’s what makes these salaries fascinating.
A Different Time
There was a time when the analyst felt like part of the attraction. John Madden wasn’t merely explaining football. Madden was football. He had the video game, and the commercials. The bus and a personality as big as the game. You wanted to hear what Madden thought.
Romo briefly felt like the next evolution when he burst onto CBS broadcasts predicting plays before they happened. He was quirky, energetic and different. Suddenly, everyone wanted the next Romo. We don’t have that magnetic personality today in the booth.
Brady has improved. J.J. Watt is learning the job. Troy Aikman is solid. There are plenty of capable analysts across the networks, but how often does an analyst say something Sunday that you’re still talking about Monday?
That’s not necessarily their fault. Broadcasting has become safer, more polished and more corporate. The NFL is a multibillion-dollar partner, and nobody wants the person holding the microphone becoming the story. Maybe that’s what networks are buying with these enormous contracts: reliability, credibility and familiarity. Someone they trust when 100 million people are watching a Super Bowl not to screw it up.
I understand that. I just don’t know whether viewers value it at $18 million a year.
That’s the strange part of the announcer salary explosion. Fans have second screens, fantasy teams, gambling apps, RedZone, alternate broadcasts and social media. There are more ways than ever to watch football without hanging on every word coming from the booth. Yet the people saying those words have never been more expensive.
Maybe that’s the ultimate irony. Networks keep paying broadcasters like they’re quarterbacks because they’re terrified of being caught without one.
Joe Buck is very good at his job. ESPN clearly believes he’s worth $108 million, and if somebody offered me $18 million a year to describe football, I’d hurt myself getting to the contract signing. But when Monday night arrives, I’m not tuning in for the Joe Buck Show. I’m tuning in for the football game.
The great announcers can make that game better. They can explain it, elevate it, make us laugh and occasionally give us a call we’ll remember forever. That’s valuable. It’s still the icing, and at $18 million a year, that’s some expensive frosting.
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