He deserves better than this.

Gary Hahn, the radio voice of NC State football and men’s basketball for the past 34 years, announced this week that he will retire at the end of the 2023-24 basketball season. Hahn, who joined the Wolfpack Sports Network prior to the 1990-91 athletic year, has been behind the mic for more than 400 Wolfpack football games, more than 1,000 men’s basketball games and a slew of baseball games.

But many in the left-leaning media want to kick him out the door for a perfectly legitimate comment he made back in January. In the midst of a national newsmaking surge of illegal aliens invading El Paso, Texas, Hahn said, “One other bowl game involving an ACC team going on, that’s the Sun Bowl, and amongst all the illegal aliens down in El Paso, it’s UCLA 14 and Pittsburgh 6.”

I grant you that it’s unusual but one local TV media outlet, which I won’t name, reported as news that Hahn’s comments were “offensive.” They weren’t quoting anyone – they were editorializing in a news story that the comments were “offensive.”

Hahn’s comments came on the heels of the Sun Bowl canceling its fan fest because El Paso was using the convention center to house around 1,000 immigrants. The city’s mayor, Oscar Leeser, had declared a state of emergency and announced that the convention center was being converted into a shelter. Hahn was simply reflecting the news of the day.

After Hahn announced his retirement, a long-time “reporter” at a supposed pro-NC State website wrote, “It’s pretty pathetic that Hahn and NC State would choose to do this now, not that it’s surprising. Hahn, for all his credentials, for as good as he has been at this job, has become an embarrassment for his brain-warped Fox News gargled nonsense that he took to air.”

He went on to criticize NC State for giving Hahn a “dignified retirement.” He wrote, “It doesn’t matter how stupid you are, how dumb your excuses, how badly your brain is poisoned; This is your legacy…”

So much for grace.

This “reporter” obviously hasn’t been keeping up with the news. He evidently thinks the media should not report on surges of illegal aliens entering the country and that sports people can’t even mention it. This should not be a right-left thing or, in his mind, a Fox News-MSNBC thing. This is an American issue. It was a factual statement about a current hot topic. Hahn was basically suspended, and then reinstated after a few days, for calling illegal aliens, illegal aliens.

I guarantee that the vast majority of North Carolinians did not find the comment offensive – ill advised in today’s environment perhaps but not offensive. Media outlets have also said the comments were “insensitive” and “disparaging” while Hahn got much worse from the mind-numbed social media woke extremists, who wanted him to be fired immediately if not actually lynched.

It really was simply an elephant-in-the-room comment. For instance, another top story at the time of his comments revolved around murders at a college in North Dakota. If a bowl game were being played there, I imagine an announcer might work that into his comments. Similarly, the top story in El Paso was how many illegal aliens there were (and still are) flooding the streets of that city.

Also, as you can see from this article link, the word illegal alien is the proper term.

Despite the current administration mandating that government workers no longer say the words “illegal alien” when talking about “illegal aliens,” it is used in virtually all the country’s immigration acts over the years and official documents that deal with immigration. So, it’s only offensive to open-border globalists and political opportunists who fear the accurate term.

Those who refuse to use the term – and those calling for Hahn to be fired – are actually the ones who are making a political issue of it.

Again, Gary Hahn deserves better than this. His legacy should be that he called more games for N.C. State than legendary play-by-play pioneers Bill Jackson and Ray Reeve as well as the popular Wally Ausley and Garry Dornburg. He is so committed to his craft and N.C. State University that he continued broadcasting during his prostate cancer battle, missing only one football game.

Hahn, who has won numerous awards including N.C. Broadcaster of the Year, has given his time freely to budding student broadcasters and, I understand, quietly supported the N.C. State athletics program financially. By all accounts, he’s a good, gentle man.

It’s more than enough that his retirement has likely been expedited by all this. Give this man the respect he deserves as he closes this chapter in his life – and in all the lives of those he has touched as “The Voice of the Wolfpack.”

If you want to learn more about the illegal immigration crisis specific to El Paso, check out these links and you’ll see that Hahn’s factual, off-hand, current-events comment was just that.

Over 80,000 immigrants released into El Paso with border facilities at max capacity
Illegal Immigration’s Terrifying Cost: El Paso spent $10 million in one month alone
El Paso reaching breaking point as illegal crossings spike
Cartels sending migrant mobs of thousands to overwhelm the US border
Migrant Crisis Video: El Paso at “breaking point” democratic mayor says (See if you believe this is “brain-warped Fox News gargled nonsense”)

For an appropriately positive and respectful announcement of Hahn’s retirement on the GoPack website, please click here.