It was 5 o’clock somewhere.
Fox sports announcer Joe Buck said Monday that he and NFL broadcast partner Troy Aikman used to sip tequila mixed drinks on occasion in the broadcast booth during games, and that he liked to nurse “the biggest beer” in the stadium to call baseball. (Hear the audio below.)
Buck’s admission on Colin Cowherd’s podcast might dash his image on the rocks, but the veteran broadcaster defended his on-air cocktail consumption. After Cowherd remarked that Buck and Aikman had the comforting repartee of two buddies watching a game over a glass of bourbon, Buck spilled the tea, er, tequila.
“I’ll say this. We have had that glass of bourbon in the booth. Although it’s not bourbon, it’s tequila, splash of Grand Marnier and grapefruit juice,” Buck replied. “I went through a couple years where, in the first inning of every postseason baseball game, I had the runner go get the biggest beer that the stadium sold. And I had it sitting there and I would sip it from time to time to remind myself to relax and have fun. I’m just doing a game.”
“And I brought that over to football, but because Troy is a man of finer tastes, beer somehow became tequila, Grand Marnier and grapefruit juice. We haven’t done it in a long time now, but it was good for a stretch and I feel like it’s a good mental trigger to just chill and remind yourself that you’re not refueling a F-16 in mid-flight. You’re doing a sporting event and if you treat it like anything other than that you’re doing yourself a disservice.”
Buck, a longtime play-by-play broadcaster, and Aikman, a former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who led the team to three Super Bowl championships, faced controversy in October when they were caught on tape questioning the value of a military flyover for a mostly empty stadium at a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game.
“That’s your hard-earned money and your tax dollars at work,” Buck can be heard saying at the time. The discussion even got political, with Aikman noting that such a display won’t happen if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected president and vice president. Aikman later said it was odd to see such an exercise for a limited audience but emphasized he was an “unwavering patriot.” Buck said he was merely mimicking a comment made by a crew member.
Fox didn’t immediately reply to HuffPost’s request for comment on Buck’s remarks.