The criticism of Joe Buck has been harsh enough at times to reach levels of fans writing petitions asking for him to be banned from announcing games (one posted by Green Bay Packers fans had more than 29,000 signatures before it closed). And, then, of course there’s the social media trolls. So how does he deal with it?
It’s not easy for my fragile ego…My therapist is always like, “Who cares?” Only one time have I had Twitter open when I was doing a game, and after that I took it off my phone. I said, “This is so counterproductive. I’m actually reacting to people reacting to what I’m saying, and it can’t work that way.”
The only guy I see on the air who legit doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him is [Charles] Barkley. But for the most part, everybody wants to be liked. At some point, you can’t be unrealistic about it. The only people I want to really like me are my family and the people who employ me.
That seems super reasonable! It’s not the first time he’s had a very reasonable take on how to deal with massive amounts of people shouting at him online and what they’re actually shouting about.
In 2017, Buck spoke to FTW about the criticism he received around what many thought was an underrated delivery of a David Tyree miracle play in 2008.
“You have to make sure what you’re seeing was really happening,” he explained at the time. “So if you’re going to launch into this call like this was the greatest catch you’ve ever seen then they come back and say it was incomplete, well then shame on you. You have to really be careful when you’re doing really any game these days.”
