Joe Buck is now officially an ESPN employee. He and longtime partner Troy Aikman were introduced Monday as the new voices of Monday Night Football. By leaving FOX, Buck is leaving baseball behind, but he may have been poised to do that anyway.
According to Andrew Marchand, Joe Buck intended to give up his role as FOX’s play-by-play man for the World Series after 2022.
People will read all kinds of things into that. Last week, WFAN’s Evan Roberts said that he was sad to see Buck choose regular season football over calling the World Series. It was a sign, according to Roberts, of how far baseball had fallen.
In reality, it isn’t about baseball at all. It is about workload.
Marchand wrote for the New York Post on Wednesday that FOX made an offer to keep Buck that was worth around $12 million per year. Buck chose a similar paycheck from ESPN that was attached to less work. That seems to indicate that the motivation was not about prestige, but about being able to spend more time at home with his wife, fellow ESPN employee Michelle Beisner-Buck, and their twin sons.
In fact, Marchand writes that Michelle’s new deal at ESPN was a motivating factor. The couple will travel together for Monday Night Football and perhaps produce some featured together.
