Like a wounded gladiator, Don Essig forced himself to sit in front of the microphone.
As his voice cracked and splintered, he fought the invisible enemy. With 46,000 fans waiting breathlessly, he struggled through the words that have become a mantra for the Duck faithful.
“We all know… it never rains at Autzen Stadium!”
Essig, the stadium voice of Oregon football and men’s basketball, would not back down from his enemy — a nasty cold — as the Ducks hosted Arizona State on Nov. 3.
“One of the guys came into the restroom at halftime when I was in there, and he said, ‘We’ve got a pool going down there on when you’re going to die,’” Essig said with a deep, hearty chuckle Wednesday. “I said, ‘Well, put five bucks in for me.’”
Essig is a faceless voice during football season, a visible presence in the winter for basketball games. Always quick with statistics and even quicker with a verbal jab, Essig has sat behind the Oregon microphone for more than 32 years. In that span, he has missed only one game, in 1984, when he had neck surgery and couldn’t hold his own head up.
The irony is that the Duck announcer is a Beaver.
Essig graduated from Oregon State in 1960 with an elementary education degree. In Corvallis, Essig used his booming voice to lead the Beaver faithful in chants during football games as the Oregon State “rally king.”
After his college days, Essig moved on to teaching and announcing. He spent 30 years in the Eugene school system as a teacher, administrator and even principal at North Eugene High School.
Now Essig runs his own business, Don Essig and Associates. He sets up seminars, retreats and workshops for businesses and groups around Eugene.
“I’m a teacher, really,” Essig said about his company. “When I do leadership stuff, I’m really teaching.”
He plays golf — he is a remarkable five-handicap — and travels to Oregon road games. But really, Essig said he most enjoys the two or three hours that he spends
behind the microphone every Saturday.
“It’s fun to be able to use something that God gave me, a great voice that’s recognizable, and I get to contribute to sports when I was never a real athlete,” Essig said. “That’s my contribution to the game.”
Duck fans may be familiar with Essig’s quick comments during games. When an opposing quarterback throws a ball into the stands, he offers, “Complete pass to section 22.” When an opposing running back slips on the field, he quips, “Six yards and tackled by AstroTurf.”
“Somewhere along the line, I’ve acquired what I call a pretty good, dry sense of humor,” Essig said. “If things happen during the game, I’m not opposed to make some smart-aleck remark about it. It’s not going to hurt anybody.”
Essig has his opinions on Oregon sports as well. Though he was a student at Oregon State, Essig calls himself “100 percent Duck.” He says that the Pit Crew isn’t as loud as it used to be, but that fan support for football is through the roof.
Among Essig’s favorite Duck moments are Kenny Wheaton’s famous interception against Washington, Ron Lee’s half-court shot to beat Stanford in the 1970s and Oregon’s toppling of John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins at McArthur Court.
For Essig, sports and life often intertwine.
“If I make a mistake, I hear about it,” Essig said. “But I ask those people, tell me about the 1,200 times — I figured it out one time, and during a regular football game I’m going to give that crowd about 1,200 different pieces of information — so I blew a couple, tell me about the 1,198 things I did right.
“I think that’s one thing that’s wrong with business. You always have meetings to discuss what’s going wrong, what about focusing on the things you did right?”
Essig takes his philosophy of life and applies it to both work and play — he gets paid virtually nothing by the Athletic Department for his announcing duties — and says he is content.
“I tell people that I’m 63 going on 30,” Essig said.
And on Saturday in the Civil War game against his alma mater, when everyone in the stadium will play their hardest, root their loudest and pour all their emotion into a football contest, Essig will be right there with them.
Without a silly cold to hold him back.