Joe Buck is poised to leave Fox after 28 years for ESPN's Monday Night Football

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https://nypost.com/2022/03/11/joe-bu...uge-espn-deal/

Buck is "expected to leave Fox Sports" for a "huge ESPN deal," reports the New York Post's Andrew Marchand, who adds that Fox today granted Buck permission to talk with ESPN and that "a deal is expected to come to fruition shortly." If a deal is done, Buck will reunite with his longtime NFL on Fox broadcast partner Troy Aikman, who reportedly signed a five-year deal worth $90 million to join MNF. Buck's potential exit leaves Fox without its top NFL broadcasting team as it prepares to broadcast next year's Super Bowl. The 52-year-old Buck, the son of legendary sports broadcaster Jack Buck, joined Fox Sports in 1994 at age 25, becoming the youngest announcer of a regular slate of NFL games. In 1996, he became the youngest World Series play-by-play announcer, a job he's held through last year. He has also done play-by-play for six Super Bowls. At ESPN, Buck will still get to call Super Bowl games -- in 2026 and 2030 -- as part of the NFL's new deal putting ESPN and ABC as part of the Big Game's network rotation. Aside from his Monday Night Football gig, Buck is expected to be involved in producing ESPN+ projects. Marchand reports that, for Buck's MLB replacement, "Fox will consider Joe Davis and Adam Amin internally, while also looking into ESPN’s Dan Shulman and MLB Network’s Matt Vasgersian externally." Kevin Burkhardt, meanwhile, is the favorite to replace Buck as Fox's No. 1 NFL play-by-play announcer, joined by recently retired NFL player Greg Olson, who started working NFL games for the network full-time last season. As Marchand notes, a Burkhardt-Olson booth would cost only $3 million to $4 million per year.

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Joe Buck and Troy Aikman's move from Fox Sports to ESPN's Monday Night Football is official

ESPN announced that Buck and Aikman will become Monday Night Football's new announcing team, replacing Steve Levy, Louis Riddick and Brian Griese. Buck exits Fox Sports after 28 years in which he called many World Series and Super Bowl games. Aikman leaves Fox Sports are joining as an analyst in 2001 shortly after his retirement from his Hall of Fame career.

ESPN hopes spending $165 million on Joe Buck and Troy Aikman will bring glamour back to the Monday Night Football booth

The NFL broadcasters are getting hefty paychecks to move to ESPN after decades at Fox Sports. Buck is reportedly earning $75 million over five years, while Aikman will receive $90 million over the same period. By leaving Fox, Buck and Aikman passed on calling two of the next three Super Bowls that are on Fox. Their ESPN deals will end at the end of the 2026 season, in which they'll call the first ABC/ESPN Super Bowl in February 2027. "This all leads to the question of: Why? It is about the games, right? No one watches for the announcers, correct?" says the New York Post's Andrew Marchand, who has been reporting extensively on their deals. "Internally, ESPN believes it will sell more and greater advertising, while externally, it has finally satisfied the NFL, which has been disappointed with ESPN’s crews from Joe Tessitore, Jason Witten and Booger McFarland to Steve Levy, Louis Riddick Jr. and Brian Griese. Monday Night Football, which ESPN will pay around $2.7 billion per year for on its new deal that extends for 11 years, is expected to have something of a renaissance in the next couple of seasons, because ESPN is going to add late-season flex scheduling." Meanwhile, Buck and his MNF predecessor Steve Levy exchanged kind words on Twitter. "I thank you for your friendship and grace with this Steve," Buck tweeted to Levy. "Excited to join YOUR network. Please sit next to me in the cafeteria- I don’t know many people there yet."

Joe Buck and Troy Aikman will make Monday Night Football relevant again

Before its move from ABC to ESPN in 2006, Monday Night Football was "the most exalted part of the NFL broadcast portfolio," says Drew Magary. "You could even argue that MNF, conceived by original NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and brought to life by ABC executive Roone Arledge, is the reason the NFL is now a television behemoth. It had the best games. It had no competition elsewhere on the dial. And it had the best announcers over the years: Al Michaels, Howard Cosell, Don Meredith, John Madden, uh … OJ Simpson. MNF was an event. Every week. But since the move to ESPN, watching Monday Night Football has been an exercise in pain. The Sunday Night Football telecast stole away Michaels and Madden and all of the cool matchups, too. Sunday Night got the flexed-in games and the advertising riches that came with them. Meanwhile, ESPN operated as if Monday Night still mattered, fawning over itself as it presented a slate of Thursday night-quality games to an exhausted football public. The games sucked and the presentation was even worse." Magary insists Buck and Aikman will bring back MNF to its former glory. "Maybe you hate Joe Buck," says Magary. "That, frankly, is none of my concern. I’m already out as a Buck fanboy, but I’d also argue to entrenched Buck haters that our man has 20 years at the helm of FOX’s NFL coverage AND their MLB coverage in his back pocket. Those 20 years aren’t so easy to blow off. Buck knows exactly what he’s looking at when he’s calling a game. He’s seen it all before, and his experience bleeds into his work in terms of both his ability to dispense information and his bone-dry sense of humor. Those qualities give Buck an edge over most of his peers not only in terms of performance but in how you, the viewer, perceive the game you’re watching." ALSO: Joe Buck returns to Fox hours after his official departure.

Joe Buck says he had a friendly exit from Fox after 28 years and is glad to give up calling the World Series

"I think it’ll be a good pressure and a good nervous," Buck tells Sports Illustrated of joining longtime NFL booth partner Troy Aikman on ESPN's Monday Night Football. Buck says he remains friends with Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks, who found a way to allow for Buck's exit despite him having one year left on his contract. "When he told me they had worked out a deal with ESPN to make it a reality, it was a lot of thank-yous and he said, 'We love you, it makes me sick to my stomach, but we understand why you wanna go,'" says Buck. Buck adds that he had intended to give up calling Major League Baseball games at Fox. "This season would’ve been my 25th World Series," says Buck, who hasn't ruled out calling MLB games on ESPN. At some point, it’s like, 'O.K., enough.' It needs a different voice. I had whittled the game so far down. I’ve gone from doing 162 games a year to doing six in the regular season. It’s harder doing that." As for reuniting with Aikman, Buck says: "I think at this point, I wanted a known quantity next to me. I think this business is more intense. As I’m coming up on 30 years in it, it’s more intense now than it’s ever been. With the amount of scrutiny that’s out there, I felt like we have a good thing. I know where he’s going. He knows where I’m going. If it was at all possible, I wanted to try to continue that."