A deeper look at Sportscaster Dale Hansen
Throughout his four-decade career in Dallas, iconic sportscaster Dale Hansen was often called bombastic and arrogant. He called himself a “male chauvinistic pig” in a commentary about women members at the Augusta National Golf Club (Hansen, 2012).
Then came Michael Sam. Then came an awakening. Then came viral moment after viral moment.
In 2014, Sam, an All-American defensive end at the University of Missouri announced he was gay.
“I decided a long time ago my life had to be about more than ball scores and highlights,” Hansen (2020) later wrote. “And the courage of Michael Sam made that possible.”
Hansen, who often describes himself as a “bald, fat white guy,” went from local sportscaster to applauded by Ellen DeGeneres and an unlikely gay rights hero to an often-viral moral compass (Justice, 2021).
Hansen had done periodic commentaries, dubbed “Unplugged,” for many years at legendary ABC affiliate WFAA-TV. But the segment about Sam quickly went viral and introduced Hansen to viewers well beyond the Lone Star State.
“(The) Michael Sam commentary, I think, is the one that took people so much by surprise,” said former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, “mainly because all of us tend to put people in a box” (WFAA, 2021b).
By the time I worked with Dale at WFAA from 2006 to 2009, including for more than a year as the online sports editor, he was already a local legend. His “Unplugged” segment about Sam, though, shaped his legacy beyond simply the games on the field and brought him notoriety in circles far afield from sports.
In some ways Hansen’s turn as an unlikely ally for gay Americans, for women’s rights, and for liberal social justice (in 2018, in fact, he said he voted for the first time in 46 years [Bogage, 2018]) is hard to fathom. From the outside, an aging wealthy white guy who lives on a sprawling property in the Dallas exurb of Waxahachie and never graduated from college is seemingly as far from “woke” as possible.
Yet in other ways, the blunt, principled sportscaster may have been building to his viral moments for his entire career.
It’s a career, though, that seemed destined to fail – if it ever got started in the first place.
After graduating from his Iowa high school, Hansen did a stint in the Navy, then some odd jobs back home. He moved into radio as a DJ before shifting to news. He got fired, a frequent theme in his early career, and decided to try for a job in TV news, but he didn’t have a college degree (Goodwyn, 2018).
“The producer asked where I went to school and I told him, ‘Logan, Iowa.’ And he said that was the end of this conversation,” Dale told a Dallas-area magazine in 2017 (Local Profile), “and as I’m sitting there the phone rings. His weekend sportscaster quit—totally unexpected. In almost pure frustration he looks at me and asks, ‘You like sports?’ ‘Oh hell, I love sports!’ Which I didn’t. I mean, I liked sports. He asked, ‘How would you like to audition for the weekend sportscaster job?’ And I said, ‘Well you said everyone who works here has to have a college degree?’ ‘Not to be a sportscaster, you don’t need the education at all,’ he replied, I kid you not.”
Like most of those early jobs, he got fired from that Omaha, Nebraska, TV station, but he soon got the break he wanted in a big city at the then-CBS affiliate in Dallas, Channel 4, in 1980. His managers wanted him to be like WFAA’s sports anchor at the time, Verne Lundquist. Hansen knew better (Curtis, 2021).
“There can’t be a better drug than somebody laughing at my jokes,” he told The Ringer in 2021 (Curtis). He went slapstick. He got attention, but, like eight other employers before, Channel 4 fired him (Macur, 2017).
He moved across town to WFAA in 1983, splitting time on the sports desk with Lundquist, who soon left for CBS full time. Hansen took over the perch as main sports anchor for the top-rated station in town and stayed for more than 38 years.
“Hansen’s first contract at Channel 8, which he signed in March 1983 after he was fired at KDFW (Channel 4), was for 13 weeks. Then he signed a one-year deal followed by a three-year agreement,” Barry Horn, the long-time Dallas Morning News sports media writer, wrote in 2017. “Eventually there was a 10-year contract.”
Before the “Unplugged” segments, Hansen was known for both his hard-hitting journalism and some hard hits.
His investigative reporting on Southern Methodist University (SMU) boosters paying its football players led to the NCAA’s first and only death penalty, suspending the program, earning Hansen Peabody and duPont-Columbia awards (WFAA, 2021a).
“It was like attacking the Catholic Church in Boston,” Hansen said in 2017 (Local Profile). “Other reporters in other towns wouldn’t have gone for [the story], but the sportscasters [in Dallas] aren’t cheerleaders—most of us aren’t.”
For 12 years, starting in 1985, he simultaneously served as sports anchor at WFAA and as the Dallas Cowboys radio analyst, creating tensions for both of his employers over concerns about his opinions (Hansen, 1997).
Those tensions began to escalate in 1994 after a terse interview with new Cowboys head coach Barry Switzer.
During a live interview, “Switzer accused Hansen of ‘fabricating stories’ about dissension on the team’s coaching staff. He screamed at Hansen and ‘playfully’ punched him in the shoulder to emphasize each point” (Anderson, 2014).
It’s a moment that certainly would have become viral, if viral was a thing in 1994.
So, Hansen wasn’t surprised when, in 1997, he was fired from his job with the Cowboys.
“But I also felt relieved. The balancing act that I had maintained for more than 12 years – as the sports anchor for WFAA-TV Channel 8, the Cowboys’ radio analyst for KVIL and talk-show host for KLIF-AM – was finally over,” Hansen wrote in D Magazine at the time.
Free again, Hansen, over time, began to spread his opinions beyond the Cowboys and sports.
But it was the 2014 commentary about Michael Sam that sent him viral, when viral was a thing. The poetically blunt language resonated.
“You beat a woman and drag her down a flight of stairs, pulling her hair out by the roots? You’re the fourth guy taken in the draft,” Hansen said during the “Unplugged” commentary about Sam coming out before the NFL draft. “You kill people while driving drunk, that guy’s welcome. Players caught in hotel rooms with illegal drugs and prostitutes, we know they’re welcome. Players accused of rape and pay the woman to go away. You lie to police, try to cover up a murder, we’re comfortable with that.”
“You love another man?” Hansen said. “Well, now you’ve gone too far!”
If you took all the sportscasters who seemingly mindlessly read off scores and injuries, few, if any, would be less likely from the outside to be a hero of the gay rights movement. That’s what he became.
Soon after his Sam segment, Ellen DeGeneres invited him to be on her eponymous show. More interviews followed. He received awards for his support of gay rights.
“It was the Michael Sam commentary that I think, and I certainly hope, has defined my life,” Hansen said in 2020.
As Horn (2017) described, the Unplugged segments “usually take him 15 minutes to write and two-to-three minutes to deliver. They have become his signature moments.”
Those signature moments have covered a myriad of topics: sexual abuse, gun control, violence against women, Jan. 6 and so much more.
“Hansen became America’s local sportscaster,” as The Ringer put it (Curtis, 2021).
Sports? It was just the entry point.
The lead to a 2017 New York Times profile of Hansen summed up where the self-described farm boy from Logan, Iowa, ended up: “You probably know Dale Hansen. Even if the name doesn’t ring a bell, you have surely seen his work by now” (Macur, 2017).
In his retirement from WFAA and television, Hansen (2021) said “good commentary should make everybody uncomfortable… we shouldn’t sanitize what can be dirty and harsh.”
“Television has to be more than sitcoms and cop shows. We need to take people out of their bubbles and their safe place and make ’em think about the world we live in,” Hansen said in his farewell broadcast Sept, 2, 2021, which the mayor of Dallas proclaimed as “Dale Hansen Day” (Cruz, 2021). “It is the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do, was to simply make you think about the things I think we should all think about.”
Photo caption: Sportscaster Dale Hansen comments on Kliff Kingsbury and the predominantly white head coaching ranks of the NFL in his Unplugged segment; screen grab of the story from WFAA in Dallas, Texas. (Photo courtesy of QuesterMark at https://www.flickr.com/photos/52855156@N00/45794170775).
About the author: Aaron Chimbel is dean and professor at St. Bonaventure University’s Jandoli School of Communication. Prior to entering academia, he was an award-winning broadcast and digital journalist, including for three and a half years at WFAA-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth.
References
Anderson, J. (2014, February 28). The Silver-Haired Texas Sportscaster Who Defended Michael Sam Was A Badass Way Before He Went Viral. buzzfeed.com. https://www.buzzfeed.com/joelanderson/the-silver-haired-texas-sportscaster-who-defended-michael-sa
Bogage, J. (2018, October 25). Why Dallas sportscaster Dale Hansen just voted for the first time in 42 years. The Washington Post.
Cruz, A. (2021, September 2). Dallas mayor proclaims Thursday as ‘Dale Hansen Day.’ WFAA.com. https://www.wfaa.com/article/opinion/dale-hansen-unplugged/dallas-mayor-proclaims-dale-hansen-day/287-06c874c0-6856-4b97-a619-8f878fab7d13
Curtis, B. (2021, July 22). Dale Hansen Is Signing Off, Taking the Anchorman Era With Him. theringer.com. https://www.theringer.com/2021/7/22/22589312/dale-hansen-dallas-sportscaster-anchorman-era
Goodwyn, W. (2018, May 1). Local Dallas Sportscaster Goes Viral For His ‘Unplugged’ Commentary. NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/2018/05/01/607483515/local-dallas-sportscaster-goes-viral-for-his-unplugged-commentary
Hansen, D. (1997, March). How I Got the Hook. D Magazine.
Hansen, D. (2012, August 22). WFAA-TV newscast.
Hansen, D. (2020, April 12). Dale Hansen’s Top 8 WFAA memories — No. 1: Michael Sam. WFAA.com. https://www.wfaa.com/article/sports/sports-blog/dale-hansen/dale-hansen-top-8-memories/287-1fa4d004-aa5a-4a68-b888-ae5f1735ddbf
Hansen, D. (2021, September 2). Dale Hansen Unplugged: ‘I will always love you.’ WFAA.com. https://www.wfaa.com/article/opinion/dale-hansen-unplugged/dale-hansen-final-unplugged/287-d22275d8-07a9-4da7-8e92-7ac7e389ddb2
Horn, B. (2017, October 27). WFAA’s Dale Hansen keeps plugging on: How, why social media giant signed on for one more year. The Dallas Morning News.
Justice, R. (2021, September). Sportscasting Legend Dale Hansen, Known for His Viral Social Commentary, Signs Off. Texas Monthly.
Local Profile (2017). Dallas-icon Dale Hansen reflects on an unforgettable career with WFAA. Localprofile.com.https://localprofile.com/dalehansen/
Macur, J. (2017, October 5). In Deeply Conservative Texas, a Folksy Voice of Progressivism. The New York Times, Section B, Page 9.
WFAA (2021, May 18). WFAA’s Dale Hansen announces he will retire Sept. 2. WFAA.com. https://www.wfaa.com/article/about-us/wfaa-sports-anchor-dale-hansen-to-retire-september-2/287-f349cb11-058c-4815-b277-1792c5bb0ed2
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