NFL Overreaction Week 13
USAT’s Prince Grimes provides a quick Thanksgiving recap and highlights the best games from Week 13 in the NFL.
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- Broadcaster Joe Buck served as a guest host on “Good Morning America” before calling the “Monday Night Football” game the same day.
- Buck enjoys the challenge of hosting “GMA” because he can use a variety of broadcast skill sets.
- He credits his work ethic to his father, Jack Buck, a legendary broadcaster who never turned down a job.
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — When Joe Buck entered the broadcast booth on the main concourse of Gillette Stadium on Dec. 1, a security guard gave him some feedback.
“Hey, Joe, you did a great job on ‘GMA’ today!”
For Buck, this was certainly a worthy marathon on Monday. He served as a guest host on “Good Morning America” in New York before taking a flight to call the “Monday Night Football” game between the New England Patriots and New York Giants on ESPN.
This will be Buck’s fifth time hosting “GMA” since he expressed interest in hosting it earlier this year. Disney bosses (the company owns ABC and ESPN) were happy to oblige. Buck’s dual duties for the day were both publicity and logistics, and his “MNF” assignment was a short flight from New York.
“That was awesome,” Buck told USA TODAY Sports from the booth. “I’m always up for a challenge. Actually, it was a logistical challenge. Now I’m here. Let’s start the match.”
For the 56-year-old Buck, this opportunity allows him to flex a different muscle of his broadcast skill set.
“People say, ‘So why would you want to do that?’ That’s good for me. It’s good for my brain,” Buck said. “That’s a good thing. I don’t know, it’s just like being challenged. It’s a long day, but what do you do with it? In the real world, people work a lot harder than they do when they get up and put makeup on their face and go on TV. I’m not disrespecting that, but it’s the kind of thing I watched my dad do when I was little.”
Buck said she watched her father, Jack Buck, a broadcaster, grow up during the Great Depression. “As a kid, we didn’t have anything and we had to make ends meet to make ends meet.” “So once I got the job, I did whatever was asked of me,” Buck added. “And he never said no.”
Joe Buck said yes to the assignment and flew to New York on Sunday after preparing for the Giants-Patriots game. It reminded Buck of calling Major League Baseball in the middle of an NFL season when calling for the postseason during his 25-year tenure at FOX.
For the first half of Monday and all day Sunday, he was able to focus on his responsibilities for “GMA.” “We just need to compartmentalize,” he said.
Buck woke up at 4:30 a.m. ET and arrived at the studio an hour later. He sat at the anchor desk, reading and tossing the teleprompter.
“I felt good from the beginning. But, as corny as it sounds, everyone is really good at what they do,” Buck said of doing “GMA.” “I have never been on a show where everything moves like clockwork.”
Buck said the show is well-structured to make it as easy to enjoy as possible, no matter who the guest host is.
“It’s fun,” he said. “Sometimes it leads to something, and you know it’s going to jump out, and you say someone’s name and they turn around. I don’t know, but I feel like TV isn’t always like that.”
A little different from his approach at a prime-time football game, he said he prepared for “GMA” segment by segment, working on what was in front of him following the advice of his producers, who gave him only what he needed to know. Sometimes he feels like he’s deferring solely to chief meteorologist Ginger Gee, but that’s because “I think they trust me to do that at this point,” he joked.
When the show ended at 9 a.m. ET, he hopped on a plane and arrived outside Boston. She hadn’t planned on taking a nap, but by 1 p.m., “it had just gotten past me.” He dozed off, got up, grabbed something to eat, took a shower, and headed to the stadium.
“Yeah, it’s like, ‘Oh, Nicolás Maduro, do I have to sit with him?’ Just kidding,” Buck joked.
While Buck typically focuses on news and stories about the NFL and his fantasy teams, he also enjoys being a citizen of the world.
“I try to know a little bit about the world around me,” he said, adding, “It’s good to be able to be versatile and have at least some interesting conversation with someone in the field.”
By nightfall, Buck was back on a more familiar playing field: a football stadium.
“I don’t know, but just try,” he said. “And it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun. There’s nothing like starting and ending the day the way I do (Monday).”
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