Georgia Southern football fans have been able to enjoy quality — if not championship-level — teams in every season since the program was revived nearly 40 years ago. In the same vein, Eagle fans have also been lucky enough to have a trio of iconic voices narrating the team’s achievements through the years.
Nate Hirsch covered the first two decades of action, letting listeners know that “Nevada, Reno can not stop this clock,” and that, “Adrian Peterson is still going. He hasn’t gone down.”
Nowadays, Danny Reed is the voice after every Eagle victory proclaiming that it is well with his soul in (insert creative nickname for game location here).
The only voice between those two came from Chris Blair, who can still be heard on any Georgia Southern highlight reel screaming about the Eagles “going to ‘The Rock’ and putting an Eagle crack in it,” and — unforgettably — that “The Eagles drain ‘The Swamp!!!”
In a twist of fate, Blair will be behind the mic again for Georgia Southern’s 2019 season opener, but will do so as the play-by-play man for the Eagles’ opponent in LSU.
“I remember early on at Southern seeing that there was a future game scheduled against LSU,” said Blair, who served as the main radio announcer for Georgia Southern from 2006-15. “I remember that the date got moved back a couple of times and just thinking how cool it would eventually be to call a game at ‘Death Valley’. It just turns out that I’ll be in the other booth.”
It’s been a hectic four years for Blair since setting sail for Baton Rouge. He is the lead broadcaster for Tigers football, men’s basketball and baseball - all of which have been stellar over the last few seasons.
In a typical season, Blair can expect the normal run-up to football beginning in August, a basketball season that can last well into the NCAA tournament in March, and an LSU Baseball season that is an annual contender to make the College World Series in late June. In all, Blair is expecting around 100 live broadcasts each season.
“It’s so much fun,, but once the merry-go-round starts, it can be a grind,” Blair said. “I remember a 2017 football game in Knoxville that got delayed by rain. I got back to Baton Rouge at 3 a.m. I dropped off one suitcase at the house, picked up another, and then I went right back to the airport to catch a plane to Hawaii for basketball.”
From his early days working on radio crews at Clemson and Lander to his time at Georgia Southern, LSU certainly seems to be a top-of-the-mountain post for Blair.
All of the plane rides are now chartered and the crowds are now bigger, but Blair still considers Georgia Southern and its fans to be an essential and much-enjoyed part of his career.
“I’ll always be grateful for my time in Statesboro,” Blair said. “It was great to realize that (at Georgia Southern) I was in a situation where everything matters. It might not be as many fans, but they’re all passionate and they’re all around. Everywhere I went in Georgia, I knew I’d run into fans that loved Georgia Southern. That prepared me for the fan base I’m a part of now.”
Georgia Southern will kick off its season against LSU at 7:30 p.m. Saturday night.
