Joe Buck is an individual that a lot of people seem to have very strong opinions about. I’m not one of them, as I don’t find his work to be very polarizing. Versus Johnny Manziel, who is obviously “love ’em or hate ’em,” for obvious reasons. (Doing things like this is for instance)
You’ll remember back on December 15th, when Manziel made his very first NFL start; and he flopped badly.Joe Buck returned from a commercial break while broadcasting the first quarter of Seattle Seahawks versus San Francisco 49ers (neither team is the Cleveland Browns, the team Manziel plays for) and proceeded to rip Manziel.
The statistics don’t lie, Money Manziel was indeed broke (and this is the reason, the Cincinnati Bengals took a page from the book of the Bayou Bengals of LSU in how to stop him why), but Buck’s spiel still seemed like it came of out nowhere. The first person bit made it even more strange.
Kudos to Troy Aikman with very timely joke. His one-liner was smooth. And remember, Joe Buck said this at a time when everyone was making their Johnny Manziel hot takes. Some were SCORCHING.
Both FOX Sports and CBS Sports had their lead announce teams do conference calls with the media this week to preview conference championship weekend. Green Bay Packers at Seattle Seahawks kicks off at 3pm on FOX. Indianapolis Colts at New England Patriots kicks of at 640 pm on CBS.
Jim Nantz and Phil Simms will call the AFC game. Troy Aikman and Joe Buck will call the NFC game. On the call I asked Buck about Aaron Rodgers and Johnny Manziel, and the big differences between the two.
“Now Johnny Manziel, I don’t know him at all, never met him, don’t know if I ever will, who knows,” Buck said.
“But he came into the NFL, walking across the stage at the draft with his hands in the air, flashing the money sign. He’s on Instagram, he’s Tweeting pictures of him in the club, getting pictures of him tweeted by other people in situations that don’t befit a franchise quarterback.”
“He’s not shy about it, he’ll answer questions and say that he can compartmentalize, go about his work and have his fun. He’s completely different from Aaron Rodgers in that way.”
“He came in looking for the spotlight, now he got the spotlight. He had a start and fell flat on his face. When you come in with ‘look at me! look at me! look at me! and then when they do look at you better deliver. And that’s just not what Aaron Rodgers is about.
“There’s a lot more guys in Aaron Rodgers camp than there are guys coming in trying to trademark Johnny Football.”
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports, Yardbarker Network, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive Inc.
You can read Banks’ feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition and listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)