How Andraya Carter became a rising, versatile talent for the future of ESPN (2024)

As ESPN heads into an unknown universe given consumer and industry trends, clear patterns have emerged around corporate investment in on-air talent. The company has paid significant sums to people they see as brands, or those that provide hours of inventory. Stephen A. Smith, Pat McAfee and a handful of others represent this on the opinion side. Troy Aikman, Joe Buck and Kirk Herbstreit would be examples on the remote broadcast side. There are others, but it is an exclusive club.

It’s not that everyone else is in the same income bracket outside of those above — salaries will always be different based on experience, leverage and your sport of expertise — but any on-air talent in 2023 that provides versatility has inherent advantages. This is certainly true as ESPN and other media outlets attempt to scale back salary.

Andraya Carter is an interesting case within this paradigm. At 29, she represents, in many ways, the future of ESPN talent. She has rightfully received terrific reviews as a basketball analyst, a former player at Tennessee who can break down in engaging terms why things are happening on the court. She’s had a lot of reps as a women’s basketball analyst, but she’s far from just that. Her other broadcast assignments include working as a sideline reporter on SEC college football and an analyst and host on men’s college basketball and the WNBA. Away from ESPN, she has worked as a studio analyst on Brooklyn Nets games. Last month, she received her most prominent assignment yet — working alongside Malika Andrews, Jay Bilas, JJ Redick, Monica Mcnu*tt, Adrian Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks as a member of ESPN’s live NBA Draft telecast.

“It’s really interesting trying to piece together what a year looks like,” Carter said. “Right now, everything I do overlaps. I would leave a Nets studio show and go do a football game on Saturday, and then I’d go to a basketball game on Sunday. It was crazy but awesome. I’m inspired by the women that have come before me, and I very much think I can take up spaces and bring value being in multiple lanes.

“In the landscape of things today, I think having versatility is helpful. I want to have the knowledge to step into any space, whether I’m filling in for someone or I’m consistently a part of a package. If I can, I want to have a role in football, and in terms of NBA and college basketball, I definitely want to try to stay in both spaces.”

Carter is a guest this week on my Sports Media Podcast, and she discussed a number of topics, including how she landed the NBA Draft assignment, going viral for joking about Redick’s shooting, and how the NBA has a role in selecting broadcasters. Fun fact: Carter has had a ball python named “Nothing” as a pet for the past 10 years (she loves snakes). She also is an amateur light welterweight boxer with a 3-1 record in North Carolina.

Below are some more highlights from our conversation.

You were one of Pat Summitt’s last recruits at Tennessee. Injuries impacted your college career. Maria Taylor, now at NBC Sports, was instrumental in you becoming a broadcaster. How so?

My senior year in high school, I tore my ACL. I recently recovered from that but ended up having trouble with it later. My freshman year in college, I had shoulder surgery. I started my freshman year, but my shoulder was continuously dislocating to the point where it disrupted everything. So I had a surgery in December that year after starting. In one of our games at Auburn, Maria was the online analyst for the game, and I talked to her there. I’m in a sling, and I just start picking her brain and chatting with her. She obviously wasn’t the Maria Taylor then that she is today in terms of what she’s done in the TV world. She was so open, so welcoming, and gave me her phone number.

Throughout my basketball career, Maria did a lot of SEC Network stuff. When I ended up foregoing my fifth year, I was still living in Knoxville finishing up my master’s degree and doing odd jobs just to make ends meet. Both Maria and (ESPN analyst) Carolyn Peck were like, for extra money, you should be the online analyst for Tennessee’s SEC Network+ games. Tennessee makes those hires, you’ll make a couple hundred bucks a game, and you get to talk basketball.

Maria watched a couple of my games that I did early, and she invited me to stay with her in Charlotte. She said, “I’ll take you around the SEC Network studios.” So I spent a weekend with her in Charlotte. She took me to the studio, and I met a ton of people that I had no idea I’d be working with on future productions. I saw what Maria did and got excited at the thought of being in those spaces. But I had zero idea that I could actually be in those spaces.

Kentucky ended up picking me up for an online game. South Carolina picked me up for a couple of online games. Then the head of women’s basketball at ESPN, Pat Lowry, caught (wind) of who I was with the help of Maria. Maria helped set up a meeting with her. If I didn’t have Maria, Pat wouldn’t have gotten back to me. Maria was the ultimate plug.

I drove to the SEC women’s basketball tournament, and Maria even gave me her credential to get in so that I could meet with Pat. That initial meeting with Pat led to me sitting in the broadcast truck to watch the SEC tournament’s women’s basketball championship game. Pat just picked my brain the whole game. “What do you think they are going to run out of bounds here?” I’m like, “Oh, (former Mississippi State player) Victoria Vivians to the corner.” “Do you think Dawn Staley is going to run zone?” “No, she hasn’t ran zone all season.” She’s just picking my brain. At some point, Pat said, “All right, next season I’ll give you two games on TV. If you do well, maybe I’ll give you some more.” It kind of just went from there, thanks to Maria.

One of the things I’ve appreciated watching your women’s basketball work is that it feels like the next evolution of analysis. It’s a combo of player analytics and breakdowns and also having the eye test as a player. Is this intentional?

None of TV was planned for me even as far as even being on TV. All of this has been a surprise. Early on when I was doing stuff with the SEC Network, they had me do this film breakdown and called it “Doing Work With Draya.” Basically, it was a big telestration type of screen, and I would pick three or four hustle plays and highlight where the hustle was or highlight where she shifted the guard or whatever happened. I was naturally enthusiastic about it. One, because I was talking about hustle, and that’s how I made a living in college basketball. Secondly, I naturally was good at it, the way I could pause and freeze it, draw it, and keep it moving and be interactive.

Once I realized that was a strength of mine, everyone that I work with played to that strength, so they’ve given me more opportunities to do that. (ESPN) created the sideline analyst opportunity where literally my only job is to find plays and opportunities during the game and use the telestrator to teach and show things. I honestly never had an idea of what kind of analyst I was going to be. It just sort of molded into its own form.

There’s probably never been a more anticipated season in women’s college basketball than this upcoming one. You must be excited.

It feels amazing to be a part of covering these athletes at this moment in time where so much is happening and they’re being recognized in a way that female athletes and women’s basketball players have always deserved to be recognized. We get to be part of putting that out into the world and sharing those stories. It honestly motivates me to do an even better job.

The one thing I can’t do is slow down or slack off in terms of my prep and the way I want to connect to coaches and players because I’ll get left behind. It’s so cool to watch these players be 100 percent their authentic selves and perform at a high level on the court. Each team has different personalities, and you start to see that more and more. I can’t even speak to how awesome it is to be part of it.

Can Leo Messi make a long-term difference for Apple and MLS? Episode 320 of the Sports Media Podcast features two guests — The Athletic national soccer reporter Paul Tenorio and Sports Business Journal soccer and hockey reporter Alex Silverman. In this podcast, we discuss how the Apple/MLS partnership is fairing; the business of Messi; how many subscribers Apple has for MLS Season Pass; how they will judge success for MLS/Apple; covering Messi; who could eventually get the World Cup rights post-Fox and more.

You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify and more.

The viewership story for the Women’s World Cup has been very positive, especially given the time-difference issue from Australia and New Zealand. Fox got a great time slot (9 p.m. ET kickoff) for the U.S. team’s 1-1 game against the Netherlands on Wednesday. That match drew 6.43 million viewers, surpassing the previous group stage record (USWNT versus Chile in 2019) by over a million viewers. (The combined audience was 7.6 million viewers with Telemundo numbers included.)

The FS1 telecast of the Argentina-South Africa group-stage match on Thursday averaged 887,000 viewers on FS1, which Fox said was up 98 percent from the average of non-U.S. group-stage matches on FS1 (449,000) four years ago.

The U.S.-Portugal match is scheduled for Tuesday at 3 a.m. ET, which is as viewer unfriendly as it gets. Those numbers will not be good. But if the U.S. wins its group, Fox would be in line for a good round of 16 start time — 10 p.m. ET on Saturday.

Some things I read over the last week that were interesting to me:

• Would the Bills cut Damar Hamlin? Safety’s story could meet cruel business of NFL. By Tim Graham of The Athletic.

• How Larry Gagosian Reshaped the Art World. By Patrick Radden Keefe of The New Yorker.

• Special report: What Roman Abramovich did next. By Adam Crafton of The Athletic.

• How the Ultrawealthy Use Private Foundations to Bank Millions in Tax Deductions While Giving the Public Little in Return. By Jeff Ernsthausen of ProPublica.

• His Hollywood star was finally rising. Now he cleans apartments. By Reis Thebault of The Washington Post.

• My road trip with Sinéad O’Connor. By Geoff Edgers of The Washington Post.

(Top photo: G Fiume / Getty Images)

Richard Deitsch is a media reporter for The Athletic. He previously worked for 20 years for Sports Illustrated, where he covered seven Olympic Games, multiple NCAA championships and U.S. Open tennis. Richard also hosts a weekly sports media podcast. Follow Richard on Twitter @richarddeitsch