Bison Weekend: 20 years later, Phil Hansen still cranks it up on game days

How he got to the booth in September of 2003 is another story.

Recently retired from the Buffalo Bills after a standout 11-year career, Hansen was living in the Fargo-Moorhead area and was looking at driving to Missoula, Montana, for Division II NDSU’s game at Division I-AA Montana. One look at a map and he shelved that idea.

So he started asking around if anybody was flying. He approached WDAY’s Stacey Anderson, whose crew was taking a private plane to Missoula to air the game.

“He said, no, can’t do it, the plane is full,” Hansen said. “Well, at least I tried and I put it to rest.”

But at about the same time, WDAY was dealing with a change in plans and partnering with a Montana television station to air the game, with sideline reporter Steve Hallstrom going into the TV booth along with radio analyst Mark Speral, a former Bison quarterback. That left WDAY radio scrambling for an analyst to go alongside play-by-play voice Scott Miller.

Anderson called Phil back and asked him if he would consider doing the color commentary.

“I said, what is ‘color?’ ” Hansen remembers saying.

Anderson explained the job responsibilities, but Hansen declined saying he didn’t have a way to Missoula.

A spot “mysteriously” opened on the plane.

Twenty years later, that radio fill-in is still at it with the Bison broadcast team.

“So I went out there and what a glorious game for the Bison,” Hansen said. “I never had any direction or schooling on radio, just kind of listened to other people and that’s how it started.”

NDSU upset the Grizzlies 25-24. A year later, the Bison began a Division I schedule. Eight years later, they won their first of nine FCS national championships and one of NDSU’s greatest players has been there every step of the way.

“You get an up-close seat,” Hansen said. “And just with what the Bison went through with the transition, there have been a lot of changes moving up to Division I and then being so successful for the last decade.”

Hansen spent his entire NFL career with the Bills from 1991-2001, getting inducted into the Bills’ Wall of Fame in 2011. The club only recognizes one player a year to put into perspective what he meant to the franchise.

Trying to remain in touch with the game, and not wanting to coach, he started officiating high school football games a year after retirement, something he remains doing to this day. In Hansen, listeners get an experienced former player who was also inducted into the Bison Athletic Hall of Fame.

But that doesn’t mean he’s always up there waving the green and yellow flag.

“The people I talk to think he brings a very honest assessment to what’s going on,” Anderson said. “When things are going good, he’s certainly good at it and when things are going bad he can talk about why they’re going bad. Anybody who knows Phil knows that’s exactly who he is. You don’t get the radio version of Phil and the real live version of Phil, they’re one and the same.”

That is true, said Jeff Culhane, the former radio voice of the Bison from 2016-21 and now in the same role at Florida State. When Miller passed away in 2016 and Culhane took the job, it was Phil who provided a good buffer of still having a legendary figure in the booth.

“Sadly when Scotty passed, those were shoes that you could not fill because of how great Scotty was and the amount of preparation that he did,” Culhane said. “But working alongside somebody that has the credentials that Phil has at the collegiate and professional levels, you had to prepare yourself as a play-by-play announcer to be ready at the highest level because Phil knows the game so well.”

Now 55 years old, Hansen said he would like to keep doing the analyst job as long as the broadcast will have him. He continually does his homework.

Three hours before the Bison and Missouri State kickoff last week in Springfield, Mo., Hansen was in the Plaster Stadium press box going over the Missouri State roster. He was paying attention to MSU sports information director Rick Kindhart going over the pronunciations of Bears players.

He wants to be objective in his analysis, which for the most part hasn’t caused any inner strife with all of NDSU’s success. The 3-8 season of 2009 got tough in that regard.

“The sport of football is more important than the Bison,” Hansen said. “They play the sport but you have to be true to the sport, too. You can nitpick all you want but when they’re winning that’s a good thing.”

The radio broadcast rights have changed hands over the years, from Forum Communications, NDSU taking it in-house to currently Learfield. Hansen still enjoys the game days, going on road trips and seeing different parts of the country.

“He has been the constant of seeing all these amazing moments of NDSU football,” Culhane said. “Living it as a player, one of the all-time greats if not the greatest player ever at North Dakota State University, to be the eyes for all the Bison fans for this amazing run that he has seen from the transition of Division II to the kings of the FCS, Phil Hansen has been the constant.”

That constant gave the Bison coaches a challenge of sorts before the first NDSU at University of Minnesota game in 2006. One of the assistants wondered aloud to Hansen if the Bison don’t fare well against the Gophers, it could potentially be very damaging to recruiting in the Twin Cities.

“I looked at him and said, well, don’t go down there and get your butts kicked,” Hansen said. “It’s an opportunity. Go down there, prove you belong. Craig Bohl did a lot of making teams think they belong.”

Bohl was the former Bison head coach who was 2-1 against the Gophers, with the only loss 10-9 in that ‘06 game. And perhaps a jumping off point in the FCS national discussion, Hansen remembers, came on the flight home from the Eastern Washington quarterfinal playoff game in 2010.

The Bison lost in overtime, but … .

”Just the feeling of we belong here,” Hansen said. “We can do this. They’re not that good. Just watching the team go from Division II and knowing and proving that they belong, you’re no different than another player that goes to a Division I school across the ball from you. You can tell them that 1,000 times but they need to experience it and prove it themselves and that’s what they and the coaches did.”