Joe Buck's addiction to hair plugs nearly cost him his voice
Joe Buck is one of the NFL’s signature voices, his weekly stint with Troy Aikman headlining NFL on Fox’s top game a signal that you’re watching the day’s biggest (or at least most-promoted) game. But it wasn’t that long ago that Buck feared he’d lost his voice, and for a most peculiar of reasons: an addiction to hair plugs.
In his upcoming memoir, quoted in Sports Illustrated, Buck indicated that he had been obsessed with avoiding baldness ever since his early 20s. “Broadcasting is a brutal, often unfair business, where looks are valued more than skill,” he wrote. “I was worried that if I lost my hair, I would lose my job. OK, that’s bulls—. It was vanity. Pure vanity. I just told myself I was doing it for TV.”
Buck’s “vanity” ended up nearly costing him his career. Before the 2011 season, he underwent his eighth hair plug procedure but awoke to find he could not speak. Buck suspects that a cuff used in the procedure came to rest on the nerves leading to his vocal cords, damaging the pathway. Buck initially lied to his bosses and the public about the injury, claiming a virus while working to recover the use of his voice. That task became the driving force for writing the book, entitled “Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, And The Things I’m Not Allowed To Say On TV.”
“I wanted to detail the time in my life where I had a lot going on and I was stressed, a time when I started to take anti-depressants and was going through a divorce,” Buck told Sports Illustrated. “Then I had this situation with my voice that rocked me to my knees and shook every part of my world. I’m 47 years old now and willing to be vulnerable sharing a story. Whether the book is read by one person or one million doesn’t concern me. Getting this out and being honest, really telling my story, that was was the impetus behind this.”
Buoyed by both use and injections directly into his vocal cords, Buck’s voice improved over the course of 2011, fully recovering by the time of that year’s World Series. Since then, he’s had no further hair replacement procedures, and while he wouldn’t rule it out, he won’t use general anesthetic again.
“I am an extremely lucky and blessed person, but I’m pretty self-aware,” Buck told SI. “I’m a flawed, hard-working, hard-trying person. I didn’t write this book to change anyone else’s life. I wrote this book to be as open and as honest as I can be.”
Here’s Buck discussing one of his signature broadcast moments: calling out Randy Moss for a “disgusting” display:
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
