The first Super Bowl in New Jersey won’t sound much different than a Giants regular-season game.
At least that’s the plan for Joe Buck, who is getting ready to call Super Bowl XLVIII from MetLife Stadium on Sunday, when the Broncos and Seahawks will square off.
“If you start changing things, you start winding your way toward trouble,” Buck said. “I think, now this being the fourth one, it’s gone from, ‘Oh, my God I am doing the Super Bowl,’ to let’s just try and have fun and do our typical game. I am proud of what we do each week. I feel like we put a good product on the air and why would we change that going into the game where we will have the most viewers.”
The argument for changing the format is to service the millions of viewers who don’t live and breathe football each Sunday and are more interested in the commercials than the players. But Buck is determined not to let that or the fact this could be the most viewed television event in history affect his preparation or approach.
“I’ve been doing football at FOX since 1994, and I’ve put as much into every game since the start of the 1994 season as the play-by-play guy as I will for this game,” Buck said.
Buck, 44, will be calling his fourth Super Bowl on Sunday. If it matches the excitement of the previous three, no one will be left disappointed.
Super Bowl XXIX saw the Patriots holding off the Eagles 24-21 and Super Bowl XLV saw the Packers top the Steelers, 31-25. But Buck said the best Super Bowl game he called — and best game he ever called — was Super Bowl XLII, which many of those in and around MetLife Stadium on a weekly basis remember fondly.
“For me, [in] the games I have been lucky enough to call, the fourth quarter of the Patriots-Giants sticks out,” Buck said. “Back in the 2007 season with the Patriots going for the perfect season, that game going back and forth in the fourth quarter, it was literally edge-of-your-seat exciting.
“Manning against Brady, except it was Eli, not Peyton. When people ask me my most memorable game in the NFL that’s the one I always say.”