Joe Buck has become a household staple in the realm of professional sports, but at one point, the FOX Sports commentator feared his career was in jeopardy.
Buck recently sat down with The Athletic’s Dan Hayes for a little question-and-answer session where he revealed a number of interesting tidbits about his life on and off the air, including the sickest he’d ever been for a broadcast. The 50-year-old pointed to a 2004 incident just days before the Carolina Panthers defeated the Philadelphia Eagles for a trip to Super Bowl XXXVIII.
“I had the worst bronchitis/laryngitis. I couldn’t speak,” Buck told Hays. “That morning (of the NFC Championship) I woke up in Philly and I was just getting sicker and sicker and I couldn’t make a sound. I went and got a steroid shot at noon. By the time they kicked off that evening, about 45 minutes before the game started my voice came back and I yelled my way through it.”
But that’s not the worst thing to happen to Buck’s voice. Seven years later, in 2011, Buck says he coped with a paralyzed vocal chord.
In that moment, he said, he worried his career was over.
“But I got through that and you realize it’s a lot more than just vocal quality,” Buck said. “There’s timing and opinion and all that other stuff. Again, going through that season and not being able to be loud led me right back to where we started this conversation with, ‘If I can’t be loud, let the crowd be loud. Just leave it alone.'”
