The Joe Buck Story

I guess the first order of business should be to explain the Scale of One to Gus Johnson. Well, it all starts with Joe Buck. Back in March, a bunch of my friends and I went out to Vegas for spring break. One night we were out at Moon, one of those swanky night clubs that opens its retractable roof every half hour. Why? Because it can, that's why. Anyway, one of our friends knew someone who hooked us up with a couple of tables. I’m not saying this to brag, just to establish that we had a home base at this club. Well, our base was infiltrated by Joe Buck. He displayed some incredibly bizarre behavior, and he just wouldn’t go away.

Let me back up a bit. So, we’re hanging out by our tables, and one of our friends spots Joe Buck. It really wasn’t that big of a deal to me, he’s just a dude with a gargantuan sized head who talks into a microphone for a living as far as I’m concerned. I said hi, shook his hand, and I was out. But, some of my friends thought it was pretty cool to run into him, and they engaged him in some conversation. Poor, misguided fools. I should probably leave their real names out, so instead, I think I’ll use character names from Saved By the Bell.

So, my two buddies, Slater and Preppie, were very excited to chat with Joe Buck. Slater was from Indiana, just like ol’ Joe, so they were talking about that for a while. I’m not really sure what Preppie’s excuse was. Anyway, Slater was there with his girlfriend, Muffin Sangria (yes, she was real, she almost beat Kelly for Homecoming Queen). After talking about sports and Indiana for a while, Joe Buck starts hitting on Muffin! Right in front of Slater! He’s trying to impress her by buying Miller Lites, slapping down a fresh $100 bill for each round. He even leaned in close to her at one point and asked her how much she loved her boyfriend. I think he was underestimating Slater’s dimples and stone washed Z Cavariccis.

Now, I should say that I wasn’t actually there for any of this. I was on the other side of the tables with my friend Johnny Dakota. The two of us were trying to find a lady for our buddy Screech. Anyway, back to Joe Buck. I think Slater and Preppie were just waiting for Joe Buck to get bored with them and go find the “guys from Fox” he claimed he was there with. They must have been running out of things to talk about because Slater mentioned the view from the balcony, how it was the best view he’d seen of the strip. Joe Buck says that there was no way he would go out on the balcony. And then he looks Muffin up and down, twice, and turns into one smooth talking sonofabitch. He says, “I don’t need to go out there, I got all the view I need right here.” Awww yeah. Joe Buck’s got game! Oh, keep in mind he was talking about his wife and kids like 15 minutes earlier.

After Joe Buck dropped his line on Muffin, he was hit with some shocked faces and awkward silence. As Slater and Preppie contemplated how they were going to get rid of Joe Buck, ol’ Joe dropped this one on them:

“I had a vasectomy on Friday and I’m wearing a jock right now.”

Slater and Preppie didn’t quite know how to respond to that one. But, Muffin, she’s a little quicker on her feet. She replies, “well, I guess the buck really does stop here.” Brilliant, not much more I can add to that one.

So, Slater is in a jam. He’s got this giant d-bag, B-list celebrity hitting on his girlfriend. He can’t really leave, because as I said at the beginning, our group was pretty entrenched at our tables. Obviously, when Slater’s in a tough spot, he looks to Preppie to get him out of it. Preppie’s quite the schemer, you know. Preppie decides that the only way to get rid of Joe Buck is to insult him. So, he comes at Joe with, “hey Joe, one a scale of one to…Gus Johnson, where would you rank yourself in the middle?”

Joe went apoplectic. Slater told him to calm down, and he actually whined “but he Gus Johnsoned me, he Gus Johnsoned me!” What a baby. I don’t know why he was so insulted. I mean, Gus is the guy who gave us this. Anyway, Joe was not amused. Falling in the middle of the scale of 1 to Gus Johnson was apparently just the thing to run Joe Buck off. We actually ended up running into him at the Playboy Club later that night, but our adventures with Joe Buck were effectively put to an end when he was Gus Johnsoned.

This story was talked about on a few blogs right after it happened. Preppie emailed the story to a certain guy who likes sports over at ESPN, and it made the rounds from there. I assure you that this story is 100% true. There were 19 of us in our group that night, and every one of us met Joe Buck, and had some sort of interaction with him. My interaction was limited, but it did lead to me saying something I never thought I’d ever hear come out of my mouth. I was talking to Screech, and I actually said, “hey, we’re gonna head down to the Playboy Club, is Joe Buck rolling with us?” Even at that moment, I appreciated how odd that sentence was. That’s when Screech filled me in on Joe Buck, the giant jock strap.

I don’t know if Joe Buck is always like that. Maybe he was on some medication because of his vasectomy, and that and the alcohol made him a little loopy. Maybe he’s normally a stand up guy. Or, maybe he’s always a whiny showoff d-bag whose fear that he’s peaked professionally causes him to hit on other dude’s girlfriends. Who knows? The important thing is that his douchbaggedness inspired the Scale of One to Gus Johnson. So, thank you Joe. Rise and Fire, buddy.

On a scale of one to Gus Johnson, I give this post a 7.