His final season at LSU was the 2015 football season and 2015–16 men's basketball season. His final baseball season was the 2015 baseball season with
Chris Blair taking over for the 2016 baseball season.[5][6]
Notable calls
The "
Earthquake Game" on October 8, 1988, in which the
Tiger Stadium crowd's reaction to LSU's game-winning touchdown pass against
Auburn is reported to have registered on a seismograph on campus.[7]
The "
Bluegrass Miracle" on November 9, 2002, a football game won by LSU against
Kentucky with a last-second touchdown pass. The call is notable in part due to Hawthorne erroneously identifying the touchdown receiver as
Jack Hunt, when it was actually
Devery Henderson. Hunt was a
defensive back and was not on the field. Hawthorne acknowledged it was Henderson later in the broadcast. The mistake was later deleted from archived versions of the broadcast.[9][10]
The
2011 "Game of the Century", a highly anticipated football game between No. 1 LSU and No. 2
Alabama on November 5, 2011, which LSU won in overtime, 9–6.[2]
Awards and recognition
In 2015, Hawthorne was honored by the
National Football Foundation with the Chris Schenkel Award as an individual with a "long, distinguished career in broadcasting with direct ties to a specific university."[11] In 2016, he was inducted into the
Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame,[12] and also received the Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association.[13]