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Joe Buck is one of the most popular NFL play-by-play announcers, but that doesn’t mean he expects any football fans to tune in just for him. Buck joined Pardon My Take this week where he discussed writing the foreword for their newly released book. During the interview with Dan “Big Cat” Katz and PFT Commenter (Eric Sollenberger), Buck essentially summoned Awful Announcing to aggregate him talking about his defunct HBO show, but that story has already been covered. Luckily, Big Cat asked Buck whether he checks Monday Night Football ratings every week to give himself a sort of ego boost. “Yeah, cause I know they’re all tuning in to go, ‘what’s he gonna say?!’” Buck joked. And while Buck doesn’t really think he can influence the ratings for an NFL game, he does still hold an interest. “Do I look? Yeah. I want my bosses to be happy. I want the people who pay a lot of money to the NFL to be thrilled that we got a great rating,” Buck admitted. “But I’m also not of the mind that I affect that. I think the only time, maybe if the game is a blowout and we’re having fun, a few people may stick around. But maybe not. I am not delusional.” Credit Buck for being modest, although it probably won’t be the opening sentiment from his agent when negotiating future contracts with ESPN. Buck, however, already kind of put ESPN in the driver’s seat of those negotiations when he said he would sign an extension “without even looking at it” earlier this year. But ESPN knows how valuable Buck and Aikman are to Monday Night Football, even if they aren’t ratings drivers. It wasn’t long ago where Monday Night Football on ESPN was suffering a bit of an identity crisis. The Jason Witten experiment was a disaster, the BoogerMobile will forever live in sports broadcast infamy, and the schedule was often filled with duds. But when Buck and Aikman arrived, they instantly revitalized the big-game feel of Monday Night Football. People tune to ESPN and ABC for Monday Night Football because it’s the NFL. But the NFL feels bigger when Buck and Aikman are on the call, and fans are always more excited when tuning in for a big game.