NC State radio announcer immediately suspended after racist bowl game remark

NC State radio announcer Gary Hahn was suspended immediately following the Duke’s Mayo Bowl for a racist comment he made on air.

NC State lost to Maryland in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, but defeat on the football field was far from the worst thing to happen in the Wolfpack community on Friday.

Radio announcer Gary Hahn embarrassed himself and the Wolfpack with a comment he made during the broadcast.

While updating the score of the Sun Bowl between UCLA and Pitt, Hahn made a completely unnecessary and inappropriate reference to immigration.

“Amongst all the illegal aliens in El Paso, it’s UCLA 14 and Pittsburgh 6,” Hahn said.

NC State radio announcer immediately suspended after racist bowl game remark

It didn’t take long for listeners to call him out for the remark and his employer, Learfield, promptly suspended him indefinitely.

“Learfield has suspended Wolfpack Sports Network play-by-play announcer Gary Hahn from his agreement indefinitely following comments made during today’s Duke’s Mayo Bowl radio broadcast,” Wolfpack Sports Properties general manager Kyle Winchester said, via the News Observer.

Hahn has been the voice of NC State sports since 1991. He has multiple North Carolina Sportscaster of the Year awards. He’s been doing this long enough to know that injecting race or politics unnecessarily is unprofessional and liable to get a broadcaster suspended, if not fired.

There was no good reason to bring up the topic of immigration when reporting the score of that game in El Paso, especially the way that he phrased it using terminology that the AP style guide moved away from a decade ago.

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