Joe Buck is now 56-years-old and has well over 30 years of broadcasting experience under his belt. He has become one of the highest paid, and most honored sports broadcasters in the world today. He also may have never had any of that success if he wasn’t the son of another famous broadcaster: Joe Buck. And the Fox broadcaster is well aware of this.
During a recent interview with the Breaking In podcast to talk about the beginning of the 2025 NFL season, Joe Buck talked a lot about how being a “nepo baby times 10” helped his career while at the same time has caused him a lot of mental anguish.
“I broke in the good old-fashioned nepotism way,” Buck told Fishbain. “And was at least smart enough to pay attention to my dad when I was lucky enough to go to the ballpark with him at Busch Stadium as a little boy. Then got the Cardinal gig at 21 and kind of took off from there. And I don’t know, my story is so different that when young people ask me, ‘How do I get into the business?’ My first answer is usually start with a famous dad and then work forward.”
Buck added that he doesn’t know if he will ever allow himself to feel like he is good at broadcasting. “Because of all the nepotism stuff and because of how I started and the breaks I got, I will always kind of have that impostor syndrome,” he said.
Early criticism about nepotism affected the rest of his career
At another point in the interview, the show’s host, Kevin Fishbain, brought up an article that was published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch when Joe Buck was just 21-years-old. In it, the writer asked, “Why is Joe Buck, at age 21, being force-fed to Cardinals fans?”
“I cried,” Buck admitted. “I was still living with my mom and dad as I was waiting for an apartment that I was trying to move into, and I remember reading that and crying. That’s how immature I was. But it was devastating to read that. The irony of that exact quote and that snippet of that article by Dan Caesar, who as you know, he and I grew, and you know, he had written another one that was pretty critical, really before I started, and that was the one thing that kind of burned me.
“It’s like, I get it, but it wasn’t unfair, there was one reason why I was doing it, and he was right,” Buck continued. “And I think that was a natural human reaction, and if you’re playing a newspaper to people reading it, of course, you’re gonna find an audience there. Like, ‘Oh, we know how this kid got his job.’ No other 21-year-olds are doing this. And the reason is, I was my dad’s son.”
On the plus side, perhaps the early criticism about nepotism spurred Joe Buck to become a better broadcaster than he would have been if no one had said anything about how he got his first big job. He easily could have gone the complete opposite direction and felt entitled, but he didn’t. And that says a lot about him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz-Hf_y1zrM
The post Joe Buck Admits Criticism About Nepotism Early In His Career Made Him Cry: ‘It Was Devastating’ appeared first on BroBible.
Joe Buck Admits Criticism About Nepotism Early In His Career Made Him Cry: ‘It Was Devastating’
Pinoy Human Rights
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