The man who couldn’t retire: Wolfpack broadcaster Gary Hahn keeps calling his final game
When Gary Hahn announced, in October, that this would be his 34th and final season broadcasting N.C. State football and men’s basketball games, he had long resigned himself to the reality that his career would end without the one signature call it was missing.
When he took the job, the Wolfpack was only three years removed from an ACC title in basketball and 11 in football. Surely it wouldn’t be long before it happened again. And yet not once, over the next 33 years, did he have the opportunity to call a Wolfpack team winning an ACC championship, let alone some greater success. For many of those years, the Wolfpack Sports Network broadcast every game of the ACC tournament, and it was always someone else at the end. North Carolina. Duke. Miami. Georgia Tech. Wake Forest. Anyone but N.C. State.
As this basketball season wound down, and Hahn’s career with it, the chances of N.C. State running off five wins in five days seemed unlikely at best. As he had been for months, Hahn was reconciled to his seemingly inevitable fate.
Until the moment finally happened, as close to the end as possible. For five days, the Wolfpack staved off both elimination and the end of Hahn’s career, until N.C. State beat North Carolina for the ACC championship, and Hahn finally had the call.
“Here’s Jordan Snell. He’s going to dribble out the clock … here’s the horn and the Pack’s done it! N.C. State is the 2024 ACC men’s basketball champion, 84-76 the final here in Washington, D.C! The confetti starts to come down from the upper reaches of Capital One Arena and the Pack is going to the NCAA tournament for the second year in a row. And they have done it the old-fashioned way: They have earned it!”
Most broadcasters don’t have to wait so long to call a moment like that. Hahn waited his entire career.
“I was just glad I didn’t screw it up,” Hahn said.
For the past two-and-a-half weeks, every game has been Hahn’s last. Seven straight times, the Wolfpack had the chance to usher Hahn into the next phase of his life. Seven straight times, Hahn has had to go back to work.
“Occasionally, he would say things like, ‘Well, this is almost over.’ Then all of a sudden, it wasn’t,” said Tony Haynes, Hahn’s broadcast partner since 1998. “You can tell, he’s really gotten into this. You think about 34 years, and he’s finally a part of an N.C. State team that won an ACC championship. Thirty-four years! That’s a big deal. And finally your last year, you’re able to call an ACC championship.”
So as the Wolfpack lives on, so does the trio of Hahn and Haynes and 89-year-old statistician Howard Baum. (In Pittsburgh last week, a CBS camera set up in front of the N.C. State broadcast position. Haynes figured the TV broadcast was going to talk about Hahn’s impending retirement. Instead, there was a long tribute to the ageless Baum, one of the last traveling radio statisticians in college basketball, who is not retiring. “Not as far as I know,” Baum said.)
Hahn is only the fourth full-time broadcaster in N.C. State history. Wally Ausley did it for 15 years. Hahn took over and did it for 34. He’s lived through Les Robinson and Herb Sendek and Sidney Lowe and Mark Gottfried and Kevin Keatts; through Dick Sheridan and Mike O’Cain and Chuck Amato and Tom O’Brien and Dave Doeren.
A lot of water has gone under those particular bridges. The last time Hahn was in this building, he called Sendek’s final game at N.C. State, a second-round NCAA tournament loss to Texas in 2006.
“I barely remember being here, but I did,” Hahn said.
Having a chance to put this kind of punctuation on his career helps dilute the memory of last winter, when he was suspended for his ill-advised comment about “illegal aliens in El Paso” during the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. Hahn has been given the opportunity to be remembered for something else, and he has tried to take advantage of this gift.
There’s always been a faction of N.C. State fans that thought Hahn wasn’t boisterous enough and didn’t appreciate his even-handed delivery. He’s never been one to scream and shout. But it’s also fair to say Hahn didn’t always have that much to get emotional about.
Even now, as much as Hahn is enjoying the ride, there’s a part of him that’s been mentally ready to move on throughout it. Part of his motivation for retiring was to take care of his ailing mother, who passed away in February. Now he needs time to handle her estate. He’s getting married in August and wants to travel with his fiancee.
“People are asking me, ‘What are you going to do when you retire?’” Hahn said. “I’m going to be slammed for about the next three years with all the stuff that I’ve got to do. … I’m looking forward to it. I really am. When I leave the air, whenever that is, I’m not going to be bawling on the air. I’m ready to do this.”
So he’s ready to go when the moment comes. He always has been. But N.C. State wouldn’t let him retire without calling a championship. And now it won’t let him go at all.
“I’d pretty much resigned myself to just bowing out and going off into the sunset without that ever happening,” Hahn said. “But these guys made it happen. It’s just an unforgettable end to a long career at N.C. State.”
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This story was originally published March 28, 2024 at 12:54 PM.
