Joseph Francis Buck (born April 25, 1969) is an American sportscaster who serves as the lead play-by-play announcer for Monday Night Football on ESPN and ABC. He also hosts ESPN Jeopardy! on Disney+. Buck previously worked for Fox Sports from its 1994 inception through 2022, serving as the lead play-by-play announcer for Fox's National Football League and Major League Baseball coverage.
Buck has called the Super Bowl six times, and the World Series 23 times. He is known for his distinctively smooth and focused style of play-calling, and is a member of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame, as is his father, Jack Buck. He has been honored with the 2020 Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the 2026 Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He is considered one of the most recognizable sportscasters in history.
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Early life and education
Buck was born in St. Petersburg, Florida and raised in the St. Louis area, where he attended St. Louis Country Day School. He began his broadcasting career in 1989 while he was an undergraduate at Indiana University Bloomington.
Career
Before Fox
Buck called play-by-play for the then - Louisville Redbirds, a minor league affiliate of the Cardinals, and was a reporter for ESPN's coverage of the Triple-A All-Star Game in 1989. In 1991, he did reporting for St Louis' CBS affiliate KMOV. Also, in 1991 Buck began broadcasting for the Cardinals on local television and KMOX Radio, filling in while his father was working on CBS telecasts. In the 1992–93 season, he was the play-by-play voice for University of Missouri basketball broadcasts.
Buck continued to call Cardinals games after being hired by Fox Sports, initially with his father on KMOX and later on FSN Midwest television. As his network duties increased, however, his local workload shrank, and before the 2008 season, it was announced that he would no longer be calling Cardinals telecasts for FSN Midwest. This marked the first time since 1960 that a member of the Buck family was not part of the team's broadcasting crew.
Fox Sports (1994–2021)
In 1994, Buck was hired by Fox, and at the age of 25 became the youngest man ever to announce a regular slate of National Football League (NFL) games on network television.
In 1996, he was named Fox's lead play-by-play voice for Major League Baseball, teaming with Tim McCarver, who had previously worked with his father on CBS. That year, he became the youngest man to do a national broadcast (for all nine innings and games, as a network employee as opposed to simply being a representative of one of the participating teams) for a World Series, surpassing Sean McDonough, who called the 1992 World Series for CBS at the age of 30. McDonough had replaced Jack Buck as CBS's lead baseball play-by-play man after he was fired in late 1991.
On September 8, 1998, Buck called Mark McGwire's 62nd home run that broke Roger Maris' single-season record. The game was nationally televised live in prime time on Fox. It was a rarity for a nationally televised regular season game not to be aired on cable since the end of the Monday/Thursday Night Baseball era on ABC in 1989.
During Fox's broadcast of the 2002 World Series, Buck paid implicit tribute to his father, who had died a few months earlier (he had read the eulogy at his father's funeral) by calling the final out of Game 6 (which tied the series at 3–3, and thus ensured there would be a Game 7 broadcast the next night) with the phrase, "We'll see you tomorrow night." This was the same phrase with which Jack Buck had famously called Kirby Puckett's home run off Braves pitcher Charlie Leibrandt, which ended Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. Since then, Joe has continued to use this phrase at appropriate times, including Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, in which the Boston Red Sox famously rallied off New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera in the 9th inning to avoid elimination. When David Ortiz's walk-off home run finally won it for the Red Sox in the 12th inning, Buck uttered, "We'll see you later tonight," alluding to the fact that the game had extended into the early morning. Most famously however, he also used the phrase at the end of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series when the Cardinals' David Freese hit a walk-off home run in the 11th inning against the Rangers to send the series to a seventh game (it was 20 years and a day since Kirby Puckett's home run). The similarity of both the call and the game situation resulted in mentions on national news broadcasts.
HBO Sports (2009–2010)
On February 5, 2009, Buck signed with HBO to host a sports-based talk show for the network called Joe Buck Live, with a format similar to that of Costas Now, the monthly HBO program previously hosted by Bob Costas. The show's debut on June 15, 2009, made national headlines due to the tension-filled banter between Buck and guest Artie Lange, a comedian from The Howard Stern Show, who made several jokes at Buck's expense. Two more episodes aired in 2009. In March 2010, Buck told a St. Louis radio station that HBO might be planning to cancel Joe Buck Live, adding that he "won't miss" the program and that it involved "a lot more effort and hassle than I ever expected". HBO subsequently confirmed the show's cancellation to Broadcasting & Cable.
ESPN/ABC (2022–present)
On March 16, 2022, ESPN announced that it had signed Buck and Aikman to a multi-year deal with ESPN, which saw them become the new lead broadcast team of Monday Night Football beginning in the 2022 NFL season, and also work on projects for ESPN+. The move ended their 20-season tenure as Fox's lead NFL broadcast team. As compensation for Buck leaving Fox Sports with one year left on his contract, ESPN sublicensed one of its Big Ten college football games for the 2022 season to Fox.
In May 2022, Buck made his on-air debut at ESPN during the 2022 PGA Championship, hosting an alternate broadcast on ESPN2 and ESPN+ produced by Peyton and Eli Manning, featuring ESPN golf analyst Michael Collins and other celebrity guests.
In 2022, Buck was offered to fill in for an ESPN-broadcast MLB game as well, but declined, telling a Sports Illustrated podcast that he was no longer interested in calling baseball, since "I feel like I've done all I could do there. If someday I wanna go back and call a few games—maybe. But I don't have that itch." In 2025, ESPN announced that Buck would call an MLB Opening Day game that season featuring the Milwaukee Brewers and New York Yankees with Joe Girardi and Bill Schroeder.
Other notable appearances
In the late 1990s, Buck hosted a weekly sports news show, Goin' Deep, for Fox Sports Net cable. He also called horse racing and professional bass fishing events early in his Fox career, as well as the network's first Cotton Bowl Classic telecast in 1999.
Since 2001, Buck has hosted the "Joe Buck Classic", a celebrity pro-am golf tournament that is played each May to raise money for St. Louis Children's Hospital.
In 2007, Buck filmed a pilot episode for a prospective late-night talk and comedy program with former Saturday Night Live writer and director Matt Piedmont. Piedmont and Buck wrote and produced the pilot with Piedmont directing, filming in New York City and Los Angeles, and featuring Molly Shannon, David Spade, and Paul Rudd. Buck co-hosted the program with Abebe Adusmussui, an actual New York City taxi driver. The pilot was not picked up as a series, however.
Buck has also appeared in various national television commercials for such clients as Holiday Inn and Budweiser beer. One of the more memorable spots for the latter had Buck goaded into using the catchphrase, "Slamma-lamma-ding-dong!" A 2008 commercial for National Car Rental had him using the catchphrase, "Now that's a good call". Buck has also done local commercials in the St. Louis market for the Suntrup chain of automobile dealerships.
He also contributes occasional opinion pieces to The Sporting News, and is a key contributor on KSLG/Team 1380 on the ITD Morning After program in St. Louis.
In the week before calling Super Bowl XLVIII, Buck starred in a Web video for Funny or Die in which he tries to report on the game from New York City but continues to get interrupted by locals who dislike him.
On February 12, 2013, Buck made a guest appearance during Fox Sports Midwest's broadcast of a St. Louis Blues hockey game. Alongside their current commentators Darren Pang and John Kelly, he discussed his father Jack Buck having called Blues hockey along with Kelly's father Dan in the late 1960s. Buck briefly took over play-by-play from Pang and Kelly, stepping aside when the Los Angeles Kings inevitably scored a power-play goal on the Blues (joking in response that "I clearly bring no mojo to the party").
Awards and honors
Eight-time Sports Emmy Award winner
Seven for Play-by-Play
One for Studio Host
Three-time NSMA National Sportscaster of the Year.
2020 Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame (Joe's father Jack Buck won the award in 1996, making him and Joe the first father-son duo to earn the distinction).
NSMA Hall of Fame inductee (class of 2024)
2026 Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame (Joe's father Jack Buck won the award in 1987, making him and Joe the first father-son duo to earn the distinction).
Criticism and controversies
Buck is generally regarded as "one of the most heavily criticized" announcers in sports, with various fans complaining that he is biased on his calls towards or against particular teams. Buck attributes this to the fact that most fan bases, especially Major League Baseball fans, are used to hearing local announcers and not those working national broadcasts: "Fans are used to hearing their hometown guys. When you come at it objectively, people aren't used to it."
Reporting from the field following the game in which Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' single-season home run record in 1998, Buck began his postgame interview on Fox by requesting (and getting) a hug from McGwire, which led to criticisms of Buck's on-air professionalism from some sources.
In January 2005, Buck drew fire for his on-air comments during an NFL playoff game between the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers. After Vikings wide receiver Randy Moss simulated mooning the Green Bay crowd in the end zone, Buck called it a "disgusting act". The moon was a response to Packers fans, who traditionally moon the Vikings players aboard the team bus, which Buck did not know about. Buck's comment also indicated that he incorrectly believed that Moss had mooned the fans. It prompted Red McCombs, then the owner of the Minnesota Vikings, to request that Buck be removed from covering their upcoming playoff game, saying that Buck's comments "suggested a prejudice that surpassed objective reporting." Buck also received criticism from other members of the media who felt he "over-reacted" and was being "inconsistent" given his network's history of programming. Buck was much more restrained in his call of the New York Jets' Isaiah Crowell using the football to simulate cleaning himself after defecation during a 2018 Thursday Night Football contest against the Cleveland Browns. "That will draw a flag every time," Buck simply commented.
In 2007, Buck was scheduled to call only eight regular-season MLB games out of a 26-game schedule for Fox (along with a handful of regional Cardinals telecasts on FSN Midwest). In an interview with Richard Sandomir of the New York Times, he defended his reduced baseball commitment: If you or the casual fan doesn't want to consider me the No. 1 baseball announcer at Fox, it's not my concern ... I don't know why it would matter. I don't know who had a more tiresome, wall-to-wall schedule than my father, and I know what it's like to be a kid in that situation ... He was gone a lot. He needed to be. I understood it. So did my mom. Because my career has gone the way it's gone, I don't have to go wall to wall. ...While I'm deathly afraid of overexposure, I'm more afraid of underexposure at home with my wife and girls.
Personal life
From 1993 to 2011, Buck was married to Ann Archambault, with whom he has two daughters, Natalie and Trudy. He married former NFL Network and now ESPN reporter and former Bronco cheerleader Michelle Beisner on April 12, 2014. They have twin sons, Blake and Wyatt. The couple reside in Ladue, Missouri.
Buck is a fan and season ticket holder of the NHL's St. Louis Blues. He revealed in a tweet in 2023 that he was a Houston Oilers fan growing up, and he supports the St. Louis Cardinals in baseball.
Vocal cord ailment
In 2011, shortly after broadcasting Super Bowl XLV for Fox, Buck claimed to have developed a virus on the nerves of his left vocal fold. Despite the ailment, which according to Buck "came out of the blue" and hampered his ability to raise his voice, he continued to broadcast baseball for Fox during the 2011 season and resumed as Fox's lead NFL announcer that fall.
In 2016, Buck revealed that the problem was not due to a virus, but rather to vocal cord paralysis likely caused by anesthesia used during multiple hair transplantation procedures.