‘First Down, Ole Miss!’ For Generations of Rebels, Glen Waddle Is the Voice of Home

OXFORD, Miss. — On a crisp fall Saturday in Oxford, the roar of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium rises like a wave, thousands of voices coming together in celebration. But then comes the voice that cuts through the noise, steady and familiar: “First down… Ole Miss!” For generations of Rebel fans, those words aren’t just an announcement. They’re a heartbeat, a reminder that this is home. And for Glen Waddle, the man behind the microphone since 1998, it’s more than a job. It’s a lifelong love letter to Ole Miss.

Growing Up Rebel

Waddle’s Ole Miss story started long before he ever stepped into a press box. As a boy in Jackson, Mississippi, he found himself captivated by Rebel football in its golden era. “I watched Archie Manning in his heyday,” Waddle remembers with a grin. “I was a Boy Scout, and we sold Cokes in the stadium. You got in free. That was a lot of excitement.”

His dad later began taking him to games in Jackson — every single one. While his parents had different plans for his education, Waddle never wavered. “My mom wanted me to go to Mississippi College,” he says. “But I told her, ‘I was born and raised watching Ole Miss, and I’m going to Ole Miss. Doesn’t matter what you say.’”

Determined, he worked summers for his father and paid his own way through both undergrad and law school without taking out a single loan. “I figured out how to get there,” he says simply, with the same grit he’s carried all his life.

A Student Who Showed Up

At Ole Miss, Waddle wasn’t just another student in the stands. He and a tight-knit group of friends treated attending games like a second major. Football, basketball, baseball, even women’s basketball back when crowds were sparse — if the Rebels were competing, they were there.“We didn’t miss anything,” he says. “We went to every game. Baseball, basketball, women’s games — all of it.”

They weren’t passive spectators, either. Waddle and his crew made themselves heard. “We were pirates,” he says with a laugh. “We’d yell at anybody and everybody — opposing players, coaches, even sportswriters if we didn’t like what they wrote.”

Bill Ross, longtime editor of the Daily Journal, often bore the brunt of their heckling when he showed up at basketball games after publishing a column that didn’t sit well with the student section. And the rivalry with Mississippi State often pushed things close to the line.“Almost got into several fights at baseball games with State players,” Waddle admits. “That almost happened more than once.” It wasn’t about hostility so much as loyalty.

For Waddle and his friends, being loud, loyal, and unrelenting was just part of being an Ole Miss Rebel. The bond they built in those stands has lasted decades. “Some of those guys are still lifelong friends,” he says.

Finding His Voice

Glen Waddle’s path to becoming the voice of Ole Miss wasn’t a straight line. It started in the early 1980s with high school football. In 1982, he was asked to handle the public address duties for the Mississippi High School All-Star Game, first for the Jackson Touchdown Club and later for the Coaches Association. He didn’t know it at the time, but those small assignments were the first steps toward something much bigger.

By 1984, Waddle had caught the attention of the Ole Miss radio crew. They brought him on as a statistician, working alongside Tom Stocker and others to track plays and numbers in real time. “That’s how I really got connected,” Waddle recalls. “I was doing stats, but I’d also done a lot of PA work by then, so people started to notice.”

The break came during a stormy afternoon in Jackson. Ole Miss was playing Mississippi State in what happened to be Rocky Felker’s debut as head coach of the Bulldogs. Rain hammered the field, tornadoes forced delays, and the stadium atmosphere was as chaotic as it gets.“They needed a fill-in, and I was there,” Waddle says. “I even had to get on the mic and tell fans to move under the stands because of the tornado warnings. That was my first Ole Miss football game as a PA announcer.”

He filled in on occasion after that — including the Georgia game to close the 1997 season — before getting the call that changed everything. In 1998, Langston Rogers from the athletic department reached out. The program needed a new full-time announcer, and they wanted Waddle. “I said, ‘Sure, I’ll be happy to do it,’” he remembers. “I’d been filling in, but this was different. It meant being the voice, not just a substitute.” Since then, he has been behind the microphone for every home football game — and countless baseball, basketball, and volleyball contests — his steady voice becoming an integral part of the Ole Miss experience itself.

Preparation Behind the Mic

What seems like a simple task to fans — announcing a first down, calling a touchdown, reading a sponsor message — is, in reality, the product of hours of preparation and precision. For Glen Waddle, game day doesn’t start at kickoff. It starts days earlier.

Each week begins with game notes. Ole Miss releases its own, and the opponent provides theirs. Waddle combs through both, paying special attention to depth charts, roster changes, and pronunciation guides. “That’s the most important part,” he says. “You don’t want to butcher a kid’s name on game day. You owe it to them to get it right.”

By Saturday, his preparation turns into routine. Waddle arrives at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium three to four hours before kickoff.  Waddle’s first stop is the press box, where he sets up what he calls his “nest” — the public address booth. He lays out game notes, highlights offensive players, kickers, and punters, and writes down tricky pronunciations directly on the flip card used during the game. Next comes coordination with the radio crew. Waddle helps longtime broadcaster David Kellum pin his spotting boards, a process that gives him a better feel for each team’s depth chart and matchups. “That helps me a lot,” Waddle says. “The depth chart changes every week, and you need to know who’s where.”

Once the marketing staff delivers the in-game script — everything from sponsor reads to promotional announcements — Waddle carefully studies it. “I try not to screw those up,” he says with a laugh. “There’s a lot of moving parts, and you don’t want to be the guy holding things up.”

During the game itself, Waddle keeps one eye on the field and another on his Kindle, where real-time stats are updated through a program called StatBroadcast. At the same time, he manually tracks plays — a habit from his days as a statistician and a safeguard in case the internet feed goes down. The result is a smooth operation that fans rarely think about. When he announces a tackle, a completion, or a drive summary, it’s delivered seamlessly because he’s already cross-checked the data, prepared the phrasing, and timed it to flow with the game.

Football, though, is only one piece of his announcing life. Basketball and volleyball offer shorter, sharper assignments. Baseball stretches over long spring days. Each sport requires a different tempo, but the approach is always the same: show up early, be prepared, and respect the athletes on the field. “It’s not just talking into a microphone,” Waddle says. “It’s making sure the game runs smoothly, the fans are informed, and the players are recognized the right way.”

Memories That Last

For someone who has been behind the microphone for nearly three decades, the memories pile up quickly. Yet a few always rise to the surface, moments etched in Waddle’s mind not just as scores and statistics, but as experiences that carried the pulse of Ole Miss history.

Ask him about Alabama, and his eyes light up. Two games in Tuscaloosa remain near the top of his list. The first came under head coach Billy Brewer, when Ole Miss finally broke through and stunned the Crimson Tide on their own field. Waddle wasn’t just a bystander — he was in the radio booth that day, feeding stats and watching a piece of history unfold. “It had been so long since we’d beaten them there,” he recalls. “You could feel it in the air — the disbelief, the excitement, the sense that we had just changed something.”

Years later, Chad Kelly engineered another improbable win in Bryant-Denny Stadium, silencing more than 100,000 Alabama fans. Waddle still remembers the moment vividly: “The whole place was quiet except for one little corner of Ole Miss fans going wild. That’s when you realize — you’re witnessing something special.”

Not all of the defining memories happened in Tuscaloosa. In Little Rock, against Arkansas, Waddle saw a finish that still gives him goosebumps. With the Razorbacks charging toward the end zone, linebacker Chris Mitchell met the ball carrier at the goal line and drove him back, sealing an Ole Miss victory. “He stopped him right there, inches away,” Waddle says. “The whole stadium went crazy. It was one of those moments that reminds you why you love sports — the drama, the tension, the eruption when your team pulls it off.”

Closer to home, victories over Mississippi State have provided their own flavor of drama. Egg Bowls are never simple affairs, and Waddle has been there for countless battles. “Anytime we beat Mississippi State, it’s a good day,” he says. “Those games mean something extra, and you can feel it.” Over years of games, he’s seen goalposts come down, tempers flare, and emotions spill over in ways that only happen when neighbors and rivals collide.

And then there are the unscripted moments, the ones that fans still talk about years later. After one hard-fought Alabama game in Oxford, Waddle closed his mic with a simple message: “On your way home, whenever you do go home, please drive carefully.” It wasn’t rehearsed; it was something that felt right in the moment. “I still get people who tell me they remember that,” he says. “Sometimes the little things stick.”

The games themselves may blur together — touchdowns, tackles, and tip-offs blending into decades of work — but the emotions remain raw and honest. For Waddle, the memories aren’t just about the outcomes on the scoreboard. They’re about the sound of a stadium holding its breath, the roar when history is made, and the pride of knowing he played a small part in telling the story of Ole Miss athletics. “That’s the constant,” Waddle says. “The game looks different. The athletes look different. The rules even look different. But the passion of Ole Miss people? That hasn’t changed. And that’s why I’m still here.”

A Legacy Sound

Every PA announcer has a signature, and for Glen Waddle, it’s four words: “First down, Ole Miss.” It’s a phrase as familiar to Rebel fans as the “Hotty Toddy” chant, echoing across Vaught-Hemingway Stadium like a stamp of belonging.

What started as a simple call has become part of the Ole Miss soundtrack. Fans shout along with him, children mimic the call in the stands, and alumni have even turned it into ringtones. Waddle laughs when people ask him to record it on their phones, but he never underestimates what it means to them. “People confuse me and David Kellum all the time,” Waddle says. “They think David is the one who says it. But that’s mine. And for a lot of fans, that’s how they recognize me.”

It’s not about being famous — it’s about being woven into the fabric of the Ole Miss experience. His voice has become the steady backdrop to unforgettable touchdowns, nail-biting finishes, and even heartbreaking losses. Generations of Rebels have grown up with it. In an era where players and coaches come and go, the call remains — a thread that ties seasons and memories together.

A Voice That Won’t Quit

Waddle has no plans of stepping away anytime soon. For him, it’s simple; if he can walk into the press box, he’ll be behind the microphone. “As long as I’m ambulatory,” he says with a grin, “if they give me a parking pass and a press pass, I’ll be there.”

He’s missed family events for Ole Miss games — even a niece’s wedding — but he doesn’t apologize. “My niece got married way out in Nevada, and we were working a game in Tuscaloosa,” Waddle recalls. “I told her I’m sorry, but you can’t schedule a wedding during football season. That’s a no-no.”

That loyalty runs both ways. Fans may not always know the man behind the mic, but they feel the constancy of his presence. Through decades of wins, losses, coaching changes, and conference shakeups, one thing has remained constant: the voice that punctuates every first down, every announcement, and every Rebel Saturday. “I just want people to remember how much I loved Ole Miss,” Waddle says. “That I put everything into it.”

This fall brings a new milestone to Waddle’s legacy. When Ole Miss and Mississippi State meet in Starkville for the Egg Bowl in November, it will mark Glen Waddle’s 600th consecutive game attended in person – a streak that stretches across generations of Rebel football.

And, one day, long after Glen Waddle has stepped away from the microphone, his words will continue to echo in the memories of Ole Miss fans. For generations, the familiar call—“First down, Ole Miss”—has carried with it not just the excitement of the game, but also the warmth of tradition. It is more than an announcement; it is a thread woven into the fabric of Rebel football.

Parents will lean down to their children in the stands and explain, “Glen Waddle began that call. He was the voice of Ole Miss for a lifetime.” In that moment, Waddle’s legacy will live on—not only in highlight reels or game-day programs, but in the hearts of those who grew up hearing him, and in the voices of those who will carry his story forward. To Glen Waddle, we say thank you, Hotty Toddy, and First Down, Ole Miss!

(Feature image credit courtesy of David Kellum)