Joe Buck agrees with notion his voice became oversaturated at Fox

Joe Buck knows why people don’t complain about him as much anymore. He’s not on television every single night in October. He’s not calling Thursday Night Football and Sunday afternoon NFL games and the World Series and the LCS all in the same month. He’s just doing Monday Night Football now, and he agrees that scarcity has made all the difference.

“I agree with it,” Buck said when asked if the limited exposure since joining ESPN has improved his online reputation. “You don’t really realize when you’re in it, and you’re doing it, because it feels normal, and that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. But when I look back and it’s like, man, I was going, especially in October, when Fox had Thursday games and Sunday games and the World Series and the LCS, I basically was on every night in the month of October.”

Buck, during an appearance on The Sports-Casters podcast with Steven Bennett, said it was natural that people grew tired of hearing him. The voice, the cadence, the tone, whatever it was — it was the same person hitting the same notes, whether it was baseball or football. He gets it now in a way he didn’t when he was in the middle of it.

“It’s just natural. It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s this guy again,'” Buck said. “And I think back on that like A) I don’t know physically or mentally that I could still do it, and B) I get it. There’s fatigue.”

Buck said sports media reporter Andrew Marchand — then with the New York Post — predicted this would happen when he left Fox for ESPN in 2022. Marchand wrote at the time that “absence makes the tweet grow fonder,” and Buck said he couldn’t have said it any better.

Buck and Troy Aikman left Fox in March 2022 after calling games together for 20 years. ESPN signed both to multiyear deals to become the new voices of Monday Night Football. Aikman’s contract with Fox was set to expire after Super Bowl LVI. Buck still had a year left on his Fox deal, but Fox and ESPN worked out an arrangement that allowed Buck to leave early to join his longtime partner.

The move meant Buck would no longer call the World Series, which he’d done for 24 consecutive years at Fox. He’d no longer call NFC Championship Games or divisional playoff games. He’d no longer be Fox’s voice for everything that mattered in October and January. He’d just be ESPN’s Monday Night Football voice, working one game per week during the regular season.

Awful Announcing’s Jay Ridgon wrote in January 2023 that Buck’s move to ESPN and reduced schedule had coincided with improved perception of his work. The piece noted that Buck had developed a reputation for being uptight and robotic earlier in his career, particularly after his infamous Randy Moss chastising. But in recent years, his status had risen, and the ESPN move accelerated that shift.

Buck said Steve Horn, who’s been with him since 1996 and worked with Bob Costas for years before that, has preached this philosophy for decades.

“He’s been with me since 1996,” Buck said of Horn. “So we’ve been together 30 years. And he’s always preached that, like the more you say yes to, the more that you’re watering down what you’re doing, and the more exclusive you can make the engagement, the better off that’ll be for you. And he’s been right. He was right when he said that 15 years ago. And he’s right now. And I agree with that.”

Buck said it became oversaturated to the point where it felt almost impersonal. It wasn’t even that people disliked him specifically — it was just the natural reaction to hearing the same person call Game 6 of the LCS one night and then a Thursday Night Football game in Arizona the next night.

“And it’s almost not even personal. It’s like it’s just circumstance, and I think just a normal reaction to ‘Wait, every big event on TV in sports — at least at Fox — it’s going to be this guy?’ And I agree with that to a certain degree,” Buck added.

Buck maintained that he’s proud of everything he did at Fox. Proud of the hard work he put in. Proud of the travel. He never bowed out of anything. He went through a paralyzed vocal cord and always showed up. Always showed up prepared and always showed up ready to do the best job he could.

But at this stage in his life, mid-50s, just doing Monday Night Football games and a couple of baseball games here and there feels right. Buck called Opening Day last year for the Brewers and Yankees with Joe Girardi and Bill Schroeder. He’s also scheduled to call Mets-Dodgers on April 15 for ESPN. Both came after telling Sports Illustrated in 2022 he wasn’t interested in calling baseball anymore because he’d done all he could do there.

“And believe me, I am not delusional to think anybody is pining for me to come back and do baseball,” Buck said. “That’s not why I do it. I do it because it’s good for my brain. It’s good for me to exercise these old muscles. I think it makes me better when I go back to the football booth, all that stuff. I don’t really see a negative in it. And when I do, I won’t do it.”