Dan Borné retires after 38 years as the voice of Death Valley
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Sarah LaBorde, Dan Borné and Chelsea Brasted smile for a photo at the end of the LSU Tigers' 2021 season. Photo: Courtesy of a friend in the PA booth
When the LSU Tigers run onto their home football field this season, Death Valley will forever sound a little different.
Why it matters: PA announcer Dan Borné announced his retirement during the offseason, making official a step back that he had taken ahead of last year.
- State Rep. Dixon McMakin officially takes over the job this season, The Advocate reports.
The big picture: Dan first took over the Tiger Stadium mic in 1985, and over 38 years, created catchphrases and stories that have helped establish the notorious atmosphere that one of college football's most storied places is known for.
- If you've been there, you don't need me to tell you about the lore he crafted.
- You've heard him deliver the weather report ("chance of rain? Never!"), and you've heard him share the time ("It is now Saturday night in DEATH VALLEY!").
But I will tell you what Dan means to me.
Zoom in: From 2011-2022, I was one of two people seated at his elbow for nearly every game.
- If you ever thought it seemed like magic that Dan could identify the playmakers before they even clambered up from the Tiger Stadium turf, then let me pull back the curtain.
- Not only could Dan hear the discussion of the on-field referees, he also had the press box play caller in his headphones.
- But as spotters, Sarah LaBorde, who joined the team a year before me, and I were typically faster than them all, confirming players' names as Dan delivered the details to 100,000 or so people.
In that way, Dan's true gift as a PA was in translating this cacophony into a live show and delivering it with the panache of a ringmaster.
Between the lines: There are some things about Dan that are definitely old school.
- He claimed he preferred women as spotters because we wouldn't want to coach from the sideline, though I have to believe he knew the folly of that every time we reacted to a dropped pass or missed block.
But Dan taught me what it means to truly have grace under pressure, to keep your head in the game when the drunken horde roars so loud you can't make sense of what just unfurled in front of you.
- In his retirement, Dan's still teaching me, too, about how to stay in touch with unlikely friends, the folks who stumble into your life and stay there by sheer force of will.
- That's taken the shape of small but meaningful acts of kindness that, when knotted together, form a friendship.
Sarah and I joked for years that if we ever won a national championship, we'd have earned rings, even though our unofficial, unpaid status meant it took nearly my entire tenure before LSU Athletics trusted us with official game day credentials.
- But after the 2019 championship win, though we didn't get rings, Dan hand-delivered to us commemorative pendants to make sure our contributions didn't go unrecognized.
Dan also taught me and countless others through his keynote addresses about "the power of the ask."
- It's a story repeated so many times that whether it's true or not simply doesn't matter.
- As he tells it, Dan got the PA job simply because he asked for it.
- It's an incredibly profound concept: that the things we want are there, ready for us, just on the other side of a question.
So, how did I get that job working with Dan for so many years?
- He saw me in downtown Baton Rouge one day, struck up a conversation like the classic Southern gent he is, and learned that, at the time, my boyfriend covered LSU. Thus, he determined I was free on Saturday nights.
- In other words: He asked.
What we're watching: Dan will be honored for his contributions to LSU sometime this season inside Tiger Stadium, LSU says. A date for that recognition has not yet been announced.