Where Are They Now? Danny Rouhier
4/23/2020 9:30:00 AM | Baseball, My GW: Celebrating our Stories
GW baseball alumnus reps alma mater on local sports talk scene
Danny Rouhier never tried stand-up comedy during his days at GW.
"I was too afraid," he said. "I didn't have the guts to do it."
Instead, Rouhier found a different stage to hone his act. The bus ride home after a GW baseball road trip provided a captive audience and a reliable flow of material. He entertained the Colonials handing out fake awards from the weekend and working out bits complete with impressions.
"Yeah," deadpanned Rouhier, a first baseman from 1998 to 2001. "I think my teammates had a pretty good idea that A) I loved attention and B) I had a pretty decent sense of humor about me."
After earning his GW degree in Political Science, Rouhier launched a career in stand-up comedy that set him on an anything-but-ordinary path to his dream job in his hometown.
He's spent the past decade talking sports as an on-air personality at 106.7 The Fan in D.C., and he's in his sixth year hosting a daily show from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. alongside Grant Paulsen. He still finds time to perform with a lineup of stand-up shows and hosting gigs around the region, as well.
In recent years, Rouhier's job has led him to be part of title celebrations for the Capitals and Nationals and a leading voice in one of the nation's top markets.
Looking back, it's been a journey that would be hard to explain to the guy who lived on the eighth floor of Guthridge Hall in Foggy Bottom, he said.
"I wouldn't have believed you, to be honest with you," said Rouhier, now 40 with wife Megan and sons William and James at home. "Just because it's the stuff we were doing on road trips and in dorm rooms.
"You're debating sports with the New York guys and the Philly guys and the Pittsburgh guys and the D.C. guys and everybody else. This is what we'd do in our spare time anyway, and the fact that now I get paid for it is pretty cool."
Part of GW Athletics Hall of Fame coach Tom Walter's first recruiting class at GW, Rouhier put together an impressive four-year run in Buff and Blue, highlighted by an All Atlantic-10 nod for a 2000 squad that won 37 games. He remains among the program's all-time top 10 in RBIs, runs, doubles and home runs.
Beyond that on-field success, Rouhier credits lessons learned at GW, especially balancing baseball and academics, with giving him the tools to succeed and the confidence to keep pushing forward in his career.
"It took a little while," Rouhier remembered. "My grades were not very good for a couple years, and it took a couple different ways to get through to a stubborn teenager and then finally turning 20 years old to realize 'Nobody's going to do it for you, but the resources are here.'"
After graduation, comedy arrived for Rouhier at the perfect time. He started performing in D.C. before moving to New York in search of more opportunities.
It was a grind picking up odd jobs during the day and performing at night, but the work provided a familiar sense of fulfillment.
"I had this big void from not having sports anymore," Rouhier said. "I'd been a baseball player – that was kind of my whole identification for 17 years – and then it gets kind of taken away when the professional ranks say 'Hey, you're not good enough.'
"You've got to figure out something else to do, and it took a couple years but I found it again and it was doing comedy stuff."
Rouhier's road back to the nation's capital began with a series of funny videos about being a Redskins fan that caught the attention of 106.7 The Fan. Guest spots led to fill-in hosting opportunities and eventually a permanent gig.
It's sincerely been a dream come true: For perspective, he says, there are 53 people on the Redskins active roster but just seven talking about the team on the FM dial on a daily basis. It's hard to believe he's sharing the local airwaves with D.C. broadcasting royalty that he grew up idolizing.
"To me, those guys were almost bigger because they were fixtures, and the players would sometimes change," Rouhier said. "It seemed more reasonable to me, as dumb as this sounds, to be on the field playing as a professional than it was to be one of those fixtures that got to talk about the games. That just seemed so far away. There's so few of those opportunities."
In a real way, Rouhier's on-air job has been changed in recent years by the success of the local squads. The Capitals broke the city's 26-year major sports title drought in 2018 before the Nationals celebrated their first championship last fall.
"Talking about real achievement instead of what should have been is the most welcome change in the history of sports discussion here in Washington, D.C." Rouhier said with a laugh. "I can safely tell you that."
And in the past six weeks, the job has been changed even more significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic with sports paused across the nation.
Rouhier is broadcasting from his basement right next to the washer and dryer – "Very glamorous," he says. – and filling four hours with Paulsen five days a week.
The NFL offseason has provided quite a bit of content, but there's also time for plenty of topics that would ordinarily be squeezed out by the NBA, NHL and MLB seasons right now.
"We're regular folks just like you who've got kids who are running around while my wife's on a conference call," Rouhier said. "We're speaking in a very relatable way, and that's something we're trying to do.
"There is some sports content, but there's a little more lifestyle content now because we're all going through something very similar with the rules that we're all under in this current climate."
Regardless of the topic, Rouhier is proud to rep GW on the local sports talk scene. It's been a long time since he was cutting up on the baseball bus, but there's no doubt those days helped shape who he is today.
"Especially in sports, your philosophies and your governing principles – how you tend to approach an issue – come from your own sports background," said Rouhier, who finally had the chance to perform at Lisner Auditorium in 2017 as an opener for SNL alum Jay Pharaoh. "Whether it's Coach Walt or guys who recruited me or my teammates, I'd say I'm definitely heavily influenced by my GW experience – as I take on very angry calls and people who disagree with me."
"I was too afraid," he said. "I didn't have the guts to do it."
Instead, Rouhier found a different stage to hone his act. The bus ride home after a GW baseball road trip provided a captive audience and a reliable flow of material. He entertained the Colonials handing out fake awards from the weekend and working out bits complete with impressions.
"Yeah," deadpanned Rouhier, a first baseman from 1998 to 2001. "I think my teammates had a pretty good idea that A) I loved attention and B) I had a pretty decent sense of humor about me."
After earning his GW degree in Political Science, Rouhier launched a career in stand-up comedy that set him on an anything-but-ordinary path to his dream job in his hometown.
He's spent the past decade talking sports as an on-air personality at 106.7 The Fan in D.C., and he's in his sixth year hosting a daily show from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. alongside Grant Paulsen. He still finds time to perform with a lineup of stand-up shows and hosting gigs around the region, as well.
In recent years, Rouhier's job has led him to be part of title celebrations for the Capitals and Nationals and a leading voice in one of the nation's top markets.
Looking back, it's been a journey that would be hard to explain to the guy who lived on the eighth floor of Guthridge Hall in Foggy Bottom, he said.
"I wouldn't have believed you, to be honest with you," said Rouhier, now 40 with wife Megan and sons William and James at home. "Just because it's the stuff we were doing on road trips and in dorm rooms.
"You're debating sports with the New York guys and the Philly guys and the Pittsburgh guys and the D.C. guys and everybody else. This is what we'd do in our spare time anyway, and the fact that now I get paid for it is pretty cool."
Part of GW Athletics Hall of Fame coach Tom Walter's first recruiting class at GW, Rouhier put together an impressive four-year run in Buff and Blue, highlighted by an All Atlantic-10 nod for a 2000 squad that won 37 games. He remains among the program's all-time top 10 in RBIs, runs, doubles and home runs.
Beyond that on-field success, Rouhier credits lessons learned at GW, especially balancing baseball and academics, with giving him the tools to succeed and the confidence to keep pushing forward in his career.
"It took a little while," Rouhier remembered. "My grades were not very good for a couple years, and it took a couple different ways to get through to a stubborn teenager and then finally turning 20 years old to realize 'Nobody's going to do it for you, but the resources are here.'"
After graduation, comedy arrived for Rouhier at the perfect time. He started performing in D.C. before moving to New York in search of more opportunities.
It was a grind picking up odd jobs during the day and performing at night, but the work provided a familiar sense of fulfillment.
"I had this big void from not having sports anymore," Rouhier said. "I'd been a baseball player – that was kind of my whole identification for 17 years – and then it gets kind of taken away when the professional ranks say 'Hey, you're not good enough.'
"You've got to figure out something else to do, and it took a couple years but I found it again and it was doing comedy stuff."
Rouhier's road back to the nation's capital began with a series of funny videos about being a Redskins fan that caught the attention of 106.7 The Fan. Guest spots led to fill-in hosting opportunities and eventually a permanent gig.
It's sincerely been a dream come true: For perspective, he says, there are 53 people on the Redskins active roster but just seven talking about the team on the FM dial on a daily basis. It's hard to believe he's sharing the local airwaves with D.C. broadcasting royalty that he grew up idolizing.
"To me, those guys were almost bigger because they were fixtures, and the players would sometimes change," Rouhier said. "It seemed more reasonable to me, as dumb as this sounds, to be on the field playing as a professional than it was to be one of those fixtures that got to talk about the games. That just seemed so far away. There's so few of those opportunities."
In a real way, Rouhier's on-air job has been changed in recent years by the success of the local squads. The Capitals broke the city's 26-year major sports title drought in 2018 before the Nationals celebrated their first championship last fall.
"Talking about real achievement instead of what should have been is the most welcome change in the history of sports discussion here in Washington, D.C." Rouhier said with a laugh. "I can safely tell you that."
And in the past six weeks, the job has been changed even more significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic with sports paused across the nation.
Rouhier is broadcasting from his basement right next to the washer and dryer – "Very glamorous," he says. – and filling four hours with Paulsen five days a week.
The NFL offseason has provided quite a bit of content, but there's also time for plenty of topics that would ordinarily be squeezed out by the NBA, NHL and MLB seasons right now.
"We're regular folks just like you who've got kids who are running around while my wife's on a conference call," Rouhier said. "We're speaking in a very relatable way, and that's something we're trying to do.
"There is some sports content, but there's a little more lifestyle content now because we're all going through something very similar with the rules that we're all under in this current climate."
Regardless of the topic, Rouhier is proud to rep GW on the local sports talk scene. It's been a long time since he was cutting up on the baseball bus, but there's no doubt those days helped shape who he is today.
"Especially in sports, your philosophies and your governing principles – how you tend to approach an issue – come from your own sports background," said Rouhier, who finally had the chance to perform at Lisner Auditorium in 2017 as an opener for SNL alum Jay Pharaoh. "Whether it's Coach Walt or guys who recruited me or my teammates, I'd say I'm definitely heavily influenced by my GW experience – as I take on very angry calls and people who disagree with me."
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