A few unmistakable sounds signal the start of Fordham commencement: the toll of the victory bell, the swell of “Pomp and Circumstance”—and the rallying voice of Sports Information Director Joe DiBari ringing out across Edwards Parade.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the 180th Commencement at Fordham University!” he’ll begin this year’s graduation, the largest ever at Fordham. In DiBari’s 24th year as commencement procession emcee, he’ll once again keep the ceremony on track, summoning nearly 6,000 students to begin their procession toward the steps of Keating with his high-spirited callouts of each Fordham school.
As a former public announcer for a minor league baseball team, the Vermont Reds, and for many years the public announcer for University baseball and soccer games, DiBari was a natural fit for the role, which was handed to him in 2001.
“I said, ‘What the heck? I’ll give it a shot,’ thinking in my mind that they only needed somebody for that year. And well, here we are, 24 years later and still going,” said DiBari, who joined Fordham in 1997.
From Science to Sports
DiBari didn’t set out to work in college athletics or do announcing of any kind. He earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degree in marine biology, and imagined he might teach or do research in the field.
“The joke I always tell people is that I would hound my fellow graduate students, and say, ‘Come on, let’s go to this football game, let’s go to that baseball game.’ And when we were eating lunch, they were all reading their scientific journals, and I read Sports Illustrated. I guess enough of them told me, ‘You should try to do something in sports,’ that I thought, okay, maybe they were being honest—or maybe they’re just trying to tell me that I really stink in marine biology!”
Going Off Script—For Family
Sports announcers come in different stripes—there are play-by-play announcers; analysts (aka color commentators); and public address [PA] announcers who share straightforward details like starting lineups and players’ scoring records. DiBari falls into this last camp for both the sports games he used to regularly announce and for commencement.
“You’re there to announce the facts … not to be a cheerleader,” said DiBari. Though PA announcers have increasingly become more like boosters, he said, he remains old-school and rarely goes off script—except to congratulate his sons Patrick, PCS ’22, and Nicholas, FCRH ’17, when they received their degrees, and his wife, who earned both her master’s and Ph.D. in social work from Fordham.
The R Words
DiBari preps for the ceremony by paying close attention to his Rs, a tricky letter on account of his Rhode Island accent. It’s not as bad as his undergrad years, when he was a first-year at the University of Southern California and a crowd of people often gathered to eavesdrop on his conversations with a dorm friend from Boston. (“They had never heard those accents before!”)
He still occasionally drops his Rs, turning doctor into doctah, or adding one where it doesn’t belong—you get the idear. So when he gets the commencement script a few days beforehand, he underlines every word that could pose a problem.
The Show Must Go On
Even with practice, DiBari sometimes mispronounces a name or word, but he follows the valuable advice he received early on to not dwell on a mistake and to just keep reading his script. He says that paid off one year when he heard the crowd go wild and spotted someone running up the steps of Keating—a streaker. “I’m trying to keep an eye on him and keep reading the script. And of course, everybody’s going crazy. People have their phones out…and the whole time, I’m just reading the script like nothing’s happening.”
Why He Loves It
Seeing student athletes and student workers in the athletics department graduate is always a special moment for DiBari, who sees them “getting their feet wet” as first-years and then emerging as graduates, “ready to go out and attack the real world.”
The day itself also never fails to thrill.
“There’s nothing more beautiful than Eddies Parade on graduation day, full of families. For most people, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
