Bob Rondeau, the voice of the Huskies, is retiring Saturday after 37 years in the press box. Bill Radke caught up with him in Arizona, where he’ll be calling the Fiesta Bowl before retiring. He asked Rondeau about an especially memorable call – which has stuck with him for all the wrong reasons.
Last month in a game against Oregon, wide receiver Dante Pettis set an NCAA record. You can hear Rondeau’s on-air reaction below.
[asset-audio[{"description": "", "fid": "141688", "uri": "npraudio://201712/pettis_clip.mp3"}]]But when he heard the replay of that call, Rondeau says, he nearly put his fist through the window of the press box. In his exuberance, you can hear him call Pettis the greatest kickoff return touchdown maker in college football history. What he meant to say was punt. Not a huge deal to the average listener, but an outsize mistake to a man who prides himself on presence in the moment.
“I haven’t gotten over missing that call yet,” he says. “It was maddening, to say the least, to miscall one of the great moments in Husky football history.” Minor mistakes notwithstanding, he’s been with the Huskies for nearly four decades of that history. On Saturday, you can hear him behind the mic one last time.
