I am 225: Chris Blair

Chris Blair had high expectations for LSU before he ever arrived on campus as the new Voice of the Tigers.

Blair hails from Hindman, Kentucky, but he had always heard about the magic of Tiger Stadium on a Saturday night or how Alex Box Stadium seated the best fans in college baseball. Hearing about it and experiencing it, he says, turned out to be two different things.

“It was more than what I expected—and I expected a lot,” Blair says. “It’s one of those things where you have an expectation of what it’s going to be like, and then when you’re right there in the middle of it, you’re like, ‘Wow. This really is unlike any other place.’”

Tiger fans spent 36 years listening to the familiar voice of Jim Hawthorne calling games, leaving some big shoes to fill for his successor.

Now, it’s Blair’s job—although he hesitates to even call what he does “working”—to relay that atmosphere along the airwaves for each of LSU’s football, baseball and basketball games.

He’s got two baseball seasons under his belt and is entering his second season calling the fall sports, but even still he struggles to grasp the opportunity he’s found himself in.

Blair grew up around radio, working or playing in a studio with his father, who was also a longtime broadcaster in Kentucky. Instead of watching sports inside sitting in front of a TV, they’d grill in the backyard and listen to games on the radio. His knowledge of the industry proves his passion; he can quickly rattle off dozens of play-by-play announcers who have been an inspiration in his work.

Blair turned that passion into a career, starting by calling high school football games for 10 years. Eventually he worked with the Clemson Tigers Sports Network and at Lander University. He most recently spent 10 years as the radio voice for Georgia Southern University. He joined the LSU staff in December of 2015.

And ever since Blair agreed to join the Tiger team, moving his wife and two kids to South Louisiana, he’s been embraced by Baton Rouge.

“What I love about the fanbase here is that a legend or a legendary play or a legendary game can be made every time we go out. Every game that I go to and that I call, there’s the potential for it to be another piece of legend and lore. … That’s because you have great athletes and great coaches, but I think that speaks more to the passion of the fanbase that they don’t live week-to-week or game-by-game, they live play-by-play. Every time a play happens, there’s the potential for it to be the play. When the game is happening, you’re on the edge of your seat every play, because it could be the next legendary play.

I’m having the time of my life. My family loves Baton Rouge. They told me when I got the job that once you’re a Tiger, you’re always a Tiger. It doesn’t matter if you went to school here. Once you’re part of the family, you’re part of the family. You hear that a lot and you think, ‘Oh, that’s a nice sentiment.’ I’m not lying when I say that’s the way it is here. It makes you feel at home. To me, that’s pretty cool, for somebody who had never lived in this state.”

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.