Don’t ask Dan Hoard to describe the year he is having. It isn’t easy for him to find the words. As the voice of the Cincinnati Bearcats, he never thought he’d see the team be in contention to play for the College Football National Championship. As the voice of the Bengals, he didn’t think a Super Bowl appearance was in the team’s immediate future.
Now he will experience both within just over a month.
“I have a renewed respect and maybe sympathy for athletes who are asked immediately after a huge moment to describe how they feel, because I find myself doing a very poor job of describing how I feel,” he told Cincinnati’s NPR affiliate WVXU. “Words are supposed to be the tools of my profession, and I’m coming up short because it’s so incredible.”
Sunday won’t be the first time Dan Hoard has attended the Super Bowl in an official capacity. He has covered six games dating back to 1992. It will be the first time he has called the game though. It is something he said he had trouble grasping at first.
“The first thing I’ve said to my wife is, ‘The Bengals are going to the Super Bowl!’ with the proper tone of disbelief. It’s unbelievable. It really is.”
Disbelief is more than fair and Dan Hoard certainly isn’t alone. After all, the Bengals were bad enough to have a top five pick in the NFL Draft each of the previous two seasons, including the top pick in the 2020 Draft, which the team used on quarterback Joe Burrow.
Hoard’s radio partner Dave Lapham is a bit more experienced in this realm. He played in two Super Bowls as an offensive lineman with the Bengals in the 1980s. He has never called the game though, and is excited to be part of a very small fraternity.
“To have played in a Super Bowl, and then broadcast one, has to be very rare. There aren’t that many. I don’t know what the number is. It’s got to be very small number. How lucky can you be?”
