Sports Q&A: Conor McGahey
CU Football’s Voice
Conor McGahey became the public address announcer for home CU football games in 2011, succeeding Alan Cass (A&S ex’63, HonDocHum’99), who retired after 50 years of making calls for CU sporting events — including almost 30 years of CU football. McGahey, 29, works full-time for Kroenke Sports & Entertainment as associate producer for game presentation for the Colorado Avalanche and the Colorado Mammoth. He started announcing sports as a 15-year-old and did his first Avalanche game when he was 20. Don’t be surprised if you hear him during a broadcast of a Denver Broncos game: He’s done those, too.
How has it been to replace a fixture like Alan Cass?
The man is a legend and he was the voice of Denver football for a long time, doing both the Buffs and the Broncos. It’s always tough when you replace a guy like that. People are used to this one voice for 45 years and when this new one comes in they may not like it. Alan was great. He gave me his full blessing. He sent me a nice note two or three games into the first season and said, ‘I want to tell you that you do a great job and I really enjoy listening to you now that I get to enjoy the football games with my wife.’ That was a great note for me to get from an unbelievably nice man. My goal every other Saturday in the fall is to not let the man down.
How did you get the job?
I’m from Breckenridge and had been going to CU games ever since I was a kid. It was a cool thing my dad and I would do. In 2007, Alan got the West Nile Virus before the Oklahoma game. Oklahoma was No. 3 in the country at that point. I don’t know why the call got to me, but it did. I did the Oklahoma game and CU won on a last-second field goal. In 2011, I heard that Alan Cass was retiring. Alan Roach (a noted Colorado-based announcer) said to me, ‘This has you written all over it.’ I let Tom McGann, CU’s associate athletic director for game management and operations, know that I was interested. He said, ‘Oh, wow, we’re not going to even talk to anyone else. It’s yours.’ It literally happened that fast. That was a real honor for me.
As a University of Denver graduate (2007), does it feel unusual to do CU games?
It isn’t weird for me because as I grew up we’d come to DU hockey games and CU football games. I enjoyed the college football atmosphere, especially because DU doesn’t have a football team. It’s not like I graduated from the University of South Carolina and went to announce Clemson games. Some people hassle me a little bit, but I always joke that DU football is undefeated since 1961 [the year the program was discontinued]. I was literally right in the northeast corner of Folsom when Rashaan Salaam (Soc ex’95) ran for his 2,000 yards for the season against Iowa State in 1994.
What do you like about announcing sporting events?
Sports are such a refuge for people. You can have people who would hate each other otherwise and they come to a game and it’s their two hours of peace. That’s where I’m lucky — I get to be part of that and give people something they love. To deliver people what they look forward to all week and all year is something really special.
Photography by Casey A. Cass