Here’s a little challenge the next time you’re watching a football game: mute the sound and try to announce it yourself. Not just “Look at him go!” but the full deal — names, plays, narrative, color commentary, all with appropriate gravitas and emotion. Try it for a play! Then imagine doing it for a three-hour game. Then imagine doing it with tens of millions of people hearing your every word, ready to pounce on every “um,” every mistake.
Not so easy, is it? Calling games well is a skill — maybe not a skill worth, say, $37 million a year, but a skill nonetheless. And because only a select few people can perform this skill well, we tend to become quite familiar with them. We’re sharing some of the best parts of our week with them, after all.
One of the NFL’s most famous broadcasting duos is on rocky ground, and like it or not, it’s going to affect all of our viewing experiences soon enough.
Troy Aikman and Joe Buck have been broadcasting together for a quarter-century, first at Fox and now at ESPN. They’re slated to call ESPN’s first Super Bowl later this season, but before we get there, they — and ESPN — have to navigate some treacherous waters.
Details are scarce, but appear to center on — shocker — money. ESPN has signed Buck to a new deal, but hasn’t reached a similar agreement with Aikman. Splitting up a proven duo by negotiating separate deals doesn’t seem like the wisest long-term plan, but then I’m not a TV executive, and neither presumably are you.
Puck reported last week that Aikman is seeking a raise — from his current $18 million a year to $30 million — and that the duo erupted in a confrontation prior to the Rams-Bills Monday night game in Los Angeles. Workplace drama is bad enough; workplace drama when you have to work in a tight booth for three straight hours seems like it would be unfathomably uncomfortable.
So what does that mean for you and me and the rest of the 15-plus million who gather every week to hear Buck and Aikman call one of the week’s best games? (Or Philadelphia-Dallas, whichever.) If the longtime duo do go their separate ways, it means the rupture of a classic partnership that’s called six Super Bowls and literally hundreds of games together.
Sportscasters’ voices imprint on our minds and hearts, particularly if we start listening to them young. For me, legendary Braves broadcasters Skip Caray and Ernie Johnson Sr. were the soundtrack of my childhood. For you, maybe it was Vin Scully, or Harry Caray, or Jack Buck, or Howard Cosell, or any of a dozen other bourbon-and-cigarette-soaked voices that brought games to life.
We form a bond with these voices, voices that are with us for decades. We hear them sitting alongside our parents, we hear them when we’re out on our own, we introduce them to our children. No matter what else is going on in life, you can always count on the voice of Al Michaels or Jim Nantz coming around again, the way we used to count on, say, John Madden and Keith Jackson.
Most people who watch Monday Night Football wouldn’t use the word “parasocial,” but that’s what’s going on here — a deeply-felt connection with public figures who don’t even know you exist. (I’m sure they’d like you if they really knew you.)
So when Aikman and Buck are reportedly feuding, we turn into amateur detectives, listening to their every utterance and reading their on-camera body language like Swifties trying to divine the track listing of Taylor’s next album. We speculate on where Aikman could go (Prime Video?) and who could replace him in the booth (Greg Olsen? Sean McVay? Jason and/or Travis Kelce? Peyton and/or Eli Manning?).
It all seems trivial, wondering about who will be talking over a football game. It’s not. The right announcer in the right moment raises sports to the level of art. (Start with Michaels’ “Do you believe in miracles?” and go from there.) The announcers are the violins in the symphony, leading the audience in appreciation and amazement. Sure, you can have a game without them, but something’s undoubtedly missing.
Maybe Aikman and Buck will get their differences patched up. Maybe ESPN will get Aikman locked down before the Super Bowl, if only to keep that from being the dominant storyline of the week. And maybe this will be the most awkward announcing gig in Super Bowl history, with more than 100 million sets of ears tuned in to every word.
Of course, there’s another option. You could always just turn off the sound and call those Buck-Aikman games yourself. That’s got to be almost as good, right?