Even 20 years later, Joe Buck remembers the nerves before the call of Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville.
Buck was just 35 years old in February 2005, the youngest broadcaster ever to call the Super Bowl for the lead television rights holder. In fact, the entire Fox Sports broadcast booth that night — Buck, Troy Aikman and Cris Collinsworth — were Super Bowl broadcast rookies. Collinsworth had some experience as a Super Bowl pregame host, but this was fresh (and nerve-wracking) territory for the trio.
To quell his nerves on game day, Buck provided himself a couple of visual cues on his broadcast boards, the cheat sheets broadcasters use to list rosters, notes and stats for all of the participants. There are never many empty spaces on a broadcaster’s board, but in the top-left corner where he had written the defensive starters, Buck provided some inspiration for himself.
He wrote, “F— IT.”
He also added: “Relax” and “Have Fun.”
“It was a reminder that what I was doing was not going to change the rotation of the earth, so just enjoy it, have fun and do what you have always done,” Buck said. “It was a visual cue to just chill and to remember that life will go back to normal within three hours.”
Joe Buck navigated his nerves ahead of the first Super Bowl he announced on TV by writing a motivational message on his play-calling card. (Courtesy of Joe Buck; photo-edited black bar via The Athletic)
Sunday, Tom Brady will stand alongside Kevin Burkhardt for the call of Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, the capstone to Brady’s first year in the broadcast booth.
With a near-ideal matchup between the two-time champion Kansas City Chiefs and Saquon Barkley-led Philadelphia Eagles, the game has a legit chance to set a Super Bowl viewership record, surpassing last year’s record audience of 123.4 million viewers that watched the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime.
Brady is the sport’s greatest Super Bowl winner, but Super Bowl broadcasting is uncharted territory for him. Sunday’s game will be far and away the biggest of the 21 games he has broadcast this season (44.2 million watched the NFC Championship Game he called), and there will be tens of millions of people tuning in who have never heard Brady call a game until now.
Plus, the reality for broadcasters is this: The Super Bowl is generally the one game each season in which viewers remember how the broadcasters did.
To get some insight into what it might be like for Brady, I spoke with Buck, Al Michaels, Boomer Esiason and longtime NFL producer Fred Gaudelli about their first Super Bowl experience, as well as the magnitude of the game for broadcasters.
“It definitely feels bigger,” said Esiason, whose first Super Bowl broadcast came in January 1990 with Al Michaels on ABC. Esiason ended up calling another 18 Super Bowls for Westwood One as the radio analyst.
“You know there are more people watching, more people listening, and everybody’s going to have an opinion on what you’re saying and how you’re saying it,” Esiason said. “Every Super Bowl that I did … you feel it. You know that millions of people are watching.”
Buck recalled being very nervous for the on-camera hit the group did before the New England Patriots kicked off Super Bowl XXXIX. (Of course, that is always an awkward, nervous spot for broadcasters.)
“I was nervous for that, and I still am, at 55, trying to get through it without saying something stupid and embarrassing yourself,” Buck said. “You’re on-screen with that lead-in. You can’t hide. But once the on-camera was finished for my first Super Bowl, I felt pretty good. Then when the game happened, I felt even more relaxed.
“Prior to kickoff there’s just so much buildup, so much hype, so much talk, and I let that little voice creep into my head that said, ‘Am I going to be able to do this?’”
Buck noted that, for a first-time Super Bowl broadcaster, it is “an odd feeling to know that you’re holding an instrument in your hand, in this case a microphone, and you’re looking into another piece of equipment, which is a camera, and on the other end of it is over 100 million people.”
“At least for me, once the game started, it was almost a relief,” he said.
Twenty years ago this week, Joe Buck called his first Super Bowl, alongside Cris Collinsworth (left) and Troy Aikman at Super Bowl XXXIX in New Orleans. (Frank Micelotta / Getty Images)
Michaels was only in his second year as the lead game caller for “Monday Night Football” when he called his first Super Bowl on Jan. 31, 1988, a three-person booth with Frank Gifford and Dan Dierdorf. There was an expectation that the Denver Broncos and Washington would produce a sizzling Super Bowl, especially given the lack of drama in some of the previous Super Bowl games. So much for that. The final score was 42-10.
“The three of us treated the lead-up to the game much as we did for every ‘Monday Night Football’ game,” Michaels recalled. “In fact, we thought of our weekly ‘Monday Night Football’ game, especially the best matchups, as mini-Super Bowls. Obviously, this was of a different breed, but we tried not to get caught up in the hype and buildup. Once the game started, I felt very much in my comfort zone. Only when the looming blowout set in did I feel a sense of deflation.”
Brady is immortal as far as handling pressure in the biggest moments. But Buck, who has worked with Hall of Famers in multiple sports, does not necessarily believe experience with pressure as an athlete is an indicator of how it will be calling a Super Bowl.
“As a player, I would imagine once you get into the rhythm and flow of a game, it’s easier than how do I put my mind and words to something where I don’t know what’s coming,” Buck said. “If you’re playing, you know the plays and you know what you’ve been practicing. There’s no practice for when you’re broadcasting here. You’re seeing something fresh and trying to describe it for 100 million people.
“You have to quiet that voice that keeps saying in your head — don’t make a mistake. This is all relatively new for Tom, so it’ll be a bit intimidating. I know from talking to Troy and Cris and different guys, they said it was almost easier to play in it than it was to broadcast it.”
Fred Gaudelli, the executive producer of the NFL for NBC Sports, said he would always take a walk around the Super Bowl field an hour or so before the start of the game. He did that to remind himself he had achieved a career goal. During his career, Gaudelli produced nine Super Bowls, including seven for the U.S. host TV broadcaster and two for an international audience.
“That walk calmed me down, centered me a little bit, and got me ready for what the next 3 1/2 or four hours would be like,” Gaudelli said. “One thing I always told our sideline reporters, especially those new to the Super Bowl, was when you get to that 30 minutes before kickoff … if you’re on the field, it really gets overwhelming.
“If you’re not ready for it, it can really have an effect on the rest of the day.”
One of the things we learned about Brady in his new role as TV talent was that he reached out to many broadcasters before the season to get insight into the profession. His Fox production team said he is very coachable. What would our group say to Brady if he reached out for advice about how to handle Super Bowl LIX?
Buck: “My advice would be to go slow. Your mind tricks you into going faster than you need to go and trying to just spit everything out right at the top. There’s two weeks of information that you’ve built up before this game kicks off, and that’s already abnormal. It’s such a cliche, but let the game come to you. The game will develop, and you’ll develop along with it, but you can’t spill everything in the first five minutes. You’re just going to trip yourself up.”
Gaudelli: “Tom is a unicorn here because he’s been to 10 of these. He’s been in the game. I don’t know if anything about this is going to feel all that foreign to him. I don’t think he’s going to be like any regular first-time broadcaster during the Super Bowl.”
Esiason: “I would tell him the same thing I would say if he were playing in his first Super Bowl — enjoy it, have fun and let people know how much you appreciate the job. People want to hear somebody that is really into it and really loves it.”
Michaels: “I think he’ll feel much the way he did when he played. He’ll be ready to go and can’t wait for the buildup to end and for the game to start. Once he gets going, he’ll settle in and get into that comfort zone. … The platform will be his biggest, but the game will take him where he needs to go as a broadcaster.”
Michaels had one final bit of advice for Brady:
“Maybe in the commercial breaks, lean back once in a while and savor the moment. That’s something he couldn’t do as a player. It’s exhilarating, so try to soak it all in.”
(Top photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
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