Dave McCann was sitting in a backstage trailer on July 1, 2017, when the pressure hit so hard he said he could not remember his name. He was about to walk out at Stadium of Fire before 45,000 fans in LaVell Edwards Stadium and military personnel watching from U.S. bases around the world.
That is why Stadium Of Fire keeps drawing attention now: it is not just a concert night, but a live show where the timing is exact and the margins are thin. McCann said he was no stranger to pre-show anxiousness after years as a news and sports anchor and as a BYU play-by-play announcer, but this one landed differently because the whole stadium was packed and the weather was perfect when the microphone finally reached him.
McCann said he locked the trailer door, got down on his knees and asked Heavenly Father to calm the storm. He said he did not ask to be pulled out of the moment, only to get through it. Then the public address announcer called, “Dave, it’s time!” and, moments later, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our host, Dave McCann!” By the third step toward the crowd, he said, the nerves that had been dogging him were already gone.
What followed was not a neat victory lap. Wayne Baruch later sent him back out to kill five minutes when Little Big Town needed extra time, and McCann said Baruch told him to talk about BYU football because people in the crowd would like that. He said he discovered plenty of Utah fans that night, and by the end of the evening the whole thing felt magical.
The pressure did not disappear for good. McCann said he has worked every Stadium of Fire since then in a variety of roles, and the nerves return every year along with unforeseen circumstances. On July 4, 2019, he met with Keith Urban before Wayne Baruch and Chuck Gayton called to say high winds had hit the stadium and Hill Air Force Base had canceled the flyover. McCann’s line about the night still fits: “It’s amazing how fast the peak of joy can navigate into a nightmare.”
That is the job at Stadium of Fire. One minute it is a packed show with a clear script and a microphone in hand. The next, weather, timing or a delay can change everything, and the host has to keep the night moving without letting the crowd feel the strain.
For McCann, the unresolved part is not whether he made it through that first night. He did. The question that keeps following him is how many more times he will keep stepping into the same pressure, year after year, and making it look easy only after the nerves have already passed.
