Joe Buck’s move to ESPN caps off the most wild free agency period in sports broadcasting history. The face of Fox Sports is heading to the WorldWide Leader to call “Monday Night Football” alongside Troy Aikman, a move that would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago. Star announcers never left their networks, unless rights agreements changed or there were other extenuating circumstances.
But that conservative landscape has been blown up. It started two years ago when CBS awarded Tony Romo $17 million annually, giving the clairvoyant and charismatic analyst an astonishing $14 million raise. Cris Collinsworth followed with an extension at NBC worth $12.5 million per year, and Jim Nantz receives $10.5 million annually.
Aikman beats them all with a reported $18 million per year salary from ESPN, and Buck is getting paid almost $15 million, according to the New York Times. Kirk Herbstreit will be collecting checks from both ESPN and Amazon after signing on for “Thursday Night Football,” while Al Michaels is reportedly working on a multi-year, $30 million deal with Jeff Bezos’ company.
But nobody signifies this era of announcer empowerment more than Buck, whom Fox hired when he was 24 years old to call MLB and NFL games. Buck is the youngest person to ever announce a regular slate of NFL games on TV, and also the youngest play-by-play person to call the World Series. His silky baritone is synonymous with the Fox brand.
Yet, when Buck’s longtime partner left, he followed. Aikman seemingly engineered the move: the ex-Cowboys QB openly lobbied for “one of his best friends” to join him at ESPN. That’s exactly what happened, even though Buck still had one year left on his Fox deal.
In the world of sports TV, broadcasters hold all of the power.
“It’s a f—- mystery to me,” an NFL producer recently told the Ringer’s Bryan Curtis.
But here’s what isn’t a mystery: the power of a star-studded NFL broadcast. ESPN is now reportedly paying the NFL $2.6 billion per season to carry MNF through 2033 and air the Super Bowl in 2023 and 2026 (Buck and Aikman have called six Super Bowls together).
Network execs apparently didn’t want to leave that kind of package in Steve Levy’s capable, yet underwhelming hands.
ESPN has failed to find a consistent Monday night booth since landing the franchise in 2006. The WorldWide Leader has run through four play-by-play voices and eight analysts, ranging from Tony Kornheiser to Brian Griese. The worst trio was probably Joe Tessitore, Booger McFarland and Jason Witten, who handled games in 2018.
Though announcers don’t impact ratings — NFL contests accounted for 48 of the 50 most-watched shows in 2021 — they can bring an intrinsic “big game” feel to the action they’re calling. When Buck and Aikman appear on the screen, viewers know it’s a major event.
With networks (and Amazon) throwing around $110 billion to carry NFL games, spending roughly $33 million on announcers who look the part is a small price to pay for a lot of cache.
Though Buck has always been with Fox, he’s built his own brand separate from the legacy network. In addition to MNF, Buck will contribute content to the ESPN+ streaming service.
We will almost certainly see more announcer mobility in the coming years. With more platforms getting into the sports business, there is an influx of national play-by-play and analyst gigs. Amazon’s entrance into the NFL world ballooned the demand for Aikman and Michaels during their free agencies. Apple, which recently inked a streaming deal with MLB, could soon follow in Amazon’s footsteps as an international sports broadcaster.
That means the money for guys like Buck and Aikman is only going to get crazier. They are hired guns whose status is breathlessly covered by reporters across the country. In other words, they’re just like the superstars they cover.
Except they wear headsets, and don’t get hit. Not a bad life.
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Tom Brady Sr.’s media blame game: Dads always want to defend their kids, but this is getting ridiculous. Tom Brady Sr. says his son was forced into premature retirement to get reporters off his work. That could work as a defense, except Brady spent the ensuing 40 days incessantly planting hints about his impending return.
What really seemed to upset Brady about ESPN’s report is that he lost control of the narrative. He’s built up his own media empire in recent years, with a production company, docuseries projects and podcast. Yet, he was scooped on his big announcement.
Blaming reporters for doing their jobs is so lame.
The scoop is up: Adam Schefter has spent the last several days feverishly tweeting out all NFL free agency news, just like always. But he’s attributing new sources to some of his info: the players’ agencies themselves. Check out these tweets from Schefter and other NFL Insiders.
It’s easy to establish the apparent quid pro quo: agencies will leak reporters info if they receive credit in return for negotiating the deals. The breaking news game has always been about horse trading, but this practice drops the veneer entirely.
Belichick losing benefit of the doubt: Bill Belichick might be out of goodwill. The Patriots head coach is rightfully getting hammered for New England’s free agent inactivity. There may not be a master plan after all.
This is another example of how damaging the Brady situation was to Belichick. He never had a plan to replace the greatest of all-time, disproving the notion that he’s always ahead of everybody else.
That especially seems to be the case this offseason, as free agents sign all around him. The “In Belichick We Trust” crowd is muted.