Joe Buck: My addiction to hair plugs nearly cost me my voice

I've always been fascinated by the dynamics of the people we see on major sporting events and how they interact with their colleagues in the truck. Are they demanding pompous asses or do they do their homework for days leading up to the game?

One of the more underrated jobs I think on NFL Sunday is Curt Menefee on FOX. The gold standard of playing traffic cop with all of the established egos on the set. Just such a better energy on those shows than on CBS which, 19 years since it got the NFL back, still feels like a second-rate production.

 

To this day, one of the best TV shows I've ever seen, sports or otherwise, was a Va. Tech season opener (against Boise I think) where they had a separate feed on another ESPN channel showing the interplay with the truck, booth, cameras, etc. Absolutely riveting and I've been hoping they do it again sometime.

 

25 years ago, my stepfamily had a satellite dish. Not one like DISH but a freaking dish.

I would pull up Quebec Nordiques games in French on the old Anik2 bird... pull in Sharks games. NBA was usually scrambled but college basketball and NHL was always on.

One night, we are watching Blues-Leafs in Toronto. The St Louis raw feed so there's no commercials. The director would have cameras zoom in to the women in the stands and the PBP guy would start talking about their figures.

"With a five-game road trip, I'd like to motorboat those..."

For a 15-year-old boy... well, it was pretty damn funny.

 

My God.
The old satellite dishes......
Like when Playboy TV was scrambled, but you could still make out the figures.........I still remember watching Time Out For Trivia on them.

 

Took a few years for the stepmom to figure out the copious amounts of unscrambled soft core porn I consumed - in various languages. On one visit, I flipped to my favorite satellites and, nope, no more signal. That bird had been taken off.

I think I had to settle for Kari Wuhrer on MTV's Remote Control...

Remember those old ESPN promos with lots of text meant to scare satellite owners into not stealing their signal? Yup. We were the target for that.

 

mmmmmmmmmmmm.........

 

I had to pause and consider that the San Jose Sharks have been around for 25 years.

 

I'm about 150 pages into the Hoe Buck autobiography. Not a bad read so far. Quick read.

He doesn't seem to have a voice that is terribly authentic so far. It's like he is a 14-year-old boy who is excited that he can swear in this book (as opposed to being on TV) and it takes away from the story. Buck admits all throughout that, indeed, he is a "lucky bastard", with the title coming from Jack Buck's affair that led to the creative of Joe. One chilling story is when Joe would go along with his dad each month to drop off a child support check for Jack's first wife and first six children.

Decent read. Get it from the library and save yourself the $28.

 

I became a Joe Buck hater when he sanctimoniously expressed his disgust when Randy Moss fake mooned Packer fans.

"That is a disgusting act by Randy Moss, and it's unfortunate that we had to air it live."

It was funny. Lighten up, ya douche.

Now he's the trying-to-hard cool guy with the beard who embraces a little too much that most people dislike him.

 

I think the real Joe Buck dislike began when he asked McGwire for a hug after he hit No. 61. The Randy Moss episode just added to it.

 

Just finished the book.

I came into it liking Joe Buck. I left it with a distaste for Joe Buck.

That's really hard to do in an autobiography.

Buck has never had a real struggle in life. Never had to worry about his next job in a super competitive business. Never had to worry about a paycheck. Always had (and still has) St Louis and his dad's DNA to fall back on if he self immolates his career.

I kept waiting for some struggle. Something that he learned in the journey. Nope. He's a douche. An actual douche.

The Peyton Manning of announcers.