They go together like Procter & Gamble, Barnes & Noble. It’s hard to imagine one without the other. And so it has been for almost three decades with Buck & Fox Sports.
But that run is reportedly over, as The New York Post’s Andrew Marchand reported on Friday that Fox had released Buck from his contract – which was still a year away – in order for him to move to ESPN. He joined 20-year-old NFL broadcast partner Troy Aikman on Monday Night Football. It is widely known that Aikman made this move, although it was not announced.
Marchand revealed that Buck was “expected to sign a five-year, $60 million to $75 million deal with ESPN” after “Fox tried to keep Buck by offering him $12 million a year.”
Marchand said he will also oversee projects for ESPN+.
People also read…
He has broadcast for Fox Sports since its founding in 1994, when he was only 25 years old and was part of a group of young announcers hired to broadcast NFL games. He quickly rose in the company, and two years later became the leading baseball announcer. And it wasn’t some limited package of regional TV shows—that same year, he aired the World Series with analyst Tim McCarver. This is what he has done 24 times already, 22 times in a row, breaking or setting longevity records.
But another notable partnership, Summerall & Madden, was the gold standard for Fox Sports—probably all sports broadcasting—when it debuted. Fox pulled off a coup in ’94, not only getting a piece of the NFL package that CBS had carried for decades, but luring in Pat Summerall and John Madden. after naysayers thought there was no way they would join the Simpsons Network lineup.
But they did. And they remained a major Fox team until Madden left for NBC in 2002 and Summerall took a smaller role at Fox. Buck took the lead in the NFL, joined by commentators Aikman and Chris Collinsworth.
So Buck then called all the big games for Fox, the NFL, and MLB. It aired the Super Bowl and the World Series six times in the same season. And he was the network’s lead golf announcer for several years when it hosted USGA events.
It has become Fox Sports, at least in terms of visibility and on-air influence. In recent October, when baseball was at its peak and coinciding with the high season of the NFL, he seemed to be there every night. But at a cost.
“I’m proud of the phrase I came up with to say in the mirror years ago: ‘I’m deathly afraid of overexposure on TV and underexposure at home,'” he said in 2018.
Now he seems to have finished the World Series, at least for the foreseeable future. And his crazy October seems to be over.
Stay tuned for the latest coverage of the Cardinals from our award-winning team of reporters and columnists.