As women’s college basketball wrapped up their ACC/SEC challenge last week and we roll into holiday basketball challenges and tournaments, there is a familiar face returning to the analyst chair on ESPN – Andraya Carter.
To many, it may seem like Carter has burst onto the ESPN scene covering women’s and men’s college basketball. She has been featured on the women’s version of College GameDay, WNBA, NBA and became the first female desk analyst ever on the men’s GameDay.
For Carter’s work, she has received a multitude of accolades demonstrating her impeccable combination of game analysis and her engaging personality on screen. Those include the 2023 Dawn Staley Excellence in Broadcasting award, a 2022 University of Tennessee Alumni Promise Award winner, the 2023 University of Tennessee 40 under 40, National Sports Media Association’s Best Young Reporter for 2022, The Athletic’s 40 Under 40: Rising Stars in Women’s Basketball list, The Athletic’s 40 Under 40 in College Sports and The Athletic’s 20 for 20: Who’s Shaping the Future of Women’s Basketball. Carter was also a 2023 Sports Emmy nominee in the Emerging On-Air Talent category.
However, Carter’s journey wasn’t an easy and seamless transition into the limelight and primetime chair on ESPN’s segments and shows, instead, this journey has been years in the making.
As you wander the halls of Tennessee’s Health and Physical Education (HPER) Building you are inundated with a building that takes you back in time. The building has a retro feel, as it opened in 1970, and very much still feels trapped in that decade—a far cry from the more modern buildings in other areas of campus.
Despite HPER’s antiquated appearance it houses some of the most dynamic programs on Tennessee’s campus within the Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies department. It is here that I met Carter in 2016 in our Women, Sport and Culture graduate course while we were both working towards our master’s degrees.
Carter walked into class on our first day with her signature high bun (think JuJu Watkins game day vibes) and decked out in Lady Vol gear. The former Lady Vol basketball player was kind but quiet and reserved, more introverted than you would expect from the personality we see today on screen.
But one thing that struck me about Carter right away as her classmate was when she was called on, presented, or spoke in class it was with intentionality and high levels of insight and preparation – a signature and key element of her DNA that ESPN audiences share in alongside her when they turn on their TV and she is giving a pre, halftime, or post-game analysis.
This work ethic ingrained in her DNA comes from her family, her upbringing and her personal experiences, but also from being a member of the Lady Vol basketball team, a culture founded on legendary coach Pat Summit’s tenacity and inspirational leadership.
It is through this Lady Vol network and connection that Carter received her first taste of broadcasting and met broadcasters Maria Taylor and LaChina Robinson, who would mentor and influence Carter’s career. Carter gives credit to Taylor and Robinson for sparking the idea for her to pursue broadcasting seriously and helping her learn the craft and prepare for an opportunity on screen.
“My network of mentors were the ones who sparked the idea for me with Maria Taylor and LaChina Robinson leading the way. It’s almost like they sparked the idea and Tennessee set fire to it, would be the best way I could explain it. Maria took me to the SEC Network studio in Charlotte and I actually spent a weekend with her down there, and she showed me the studio and I thought it would be so cool. Her and Lachina both encouraged me to do those [first] online games.”
Due to Carter’s connection to Tennessee, they were on board with her calling games on air right away and assisted in her honing this new craft, “Tennessee gave me a handful of their games. Not only that, but Bob Kesling (Tennessee Athletics Director of Broadcasting) brought me into the Vol4Life films studio one time and let me practice what an opening would be like. They [Tennessee] just really poured into me, they were honest with me and gave me great critique.”
The game that put Carter on the sports media map also came from a Lady Vol connection, as her former assistant Krya Elzy, an assistant at Kentucky at the time called asking her to take a last-minute opening broadcasting their game online against Mississippi State in 2016, both teams at the time were ranked in the AP Top 15.
Carter remembers, “That was the year Mississippi State was really good, so the game went to overtime, and it was an online game, but people started tuning in. People were like ‘Who’s calling this game?’ and everyone was like ‘It’s Andraya Carter!’ Rebecca Lobo tweeted about me that same year saying that I did a good job. I still have a screenshot of the tweet because it meant so much to me.”
Former Lady Vol Andraya Carter is a solid analyst on the Tennessee SEC Network+ games.
— Rebecca Lobo (@RebeccaLobo) February 3, 2017
Following the “breakout” game at Kentucky, Carter reached out to her former assistant, Jolette Law who joined Dawn Staley’s staff at South Carolina for an opportunity to call Gamecock games online.
“I asked Coach Law to put in a good word for me to Dawn Staley for her approval to be an analyst for them.” The next season, Aja Wilson’s senior year, Carter got a call and commitment from South Carolina to let her work a handful of games. “I think playing for Coach Law and always giving my best effort against Coach Staley when we played South Carolina helped them trust me right away as an analyst. South Carolina was coming off a National Championship and still Coach Staley let me in and was always an open book with me. My first game on TV was shortly after a South Carolina game online and I know having Coach Staley’s support helped me believe in myself so much more. It all goes back to support and belief for me. I was surrounded by it early on when I wasn’t always confident that I belonged here.”
As Carter reflects on this time she cannot help but look at her trajectory alongside others, she said, “It’s also funny thinking that my first season on TV was A’ja’s senior year because it feels like our pro careers, hers as a player and mine on TV, started together. Before the 2022 WNBA Finals I was working and after shootaround A’ja had a ‘look how far we’ve come’ moment together. It still feels so surreal sometimes.”
Although covering the Kentucky/Mississippi State matchup was a turning point in Carter’s broadcasting career, she never misses the opportunity to point specifically to her connection with other women in the industry that championed her, especially Robinson.
Carter joined Robinson’s Rising Media Stars bootcamp in 2018, a program designed to help women of color gain positions in sports broadcasting. It was at this bootcamp that Carter received more detailed repetitions on screen and was paired with a direct mentor, “The cool thing about Rising Media Stars was we had the network of each other, we had the mentorship from LaChina, but also, we got paired with a mentor. Mine was Ros Gold-Onwude is now a great friend of mine, which is crazy to think about. It’s actually how a lot of people are now, people I used to and still do admire just became colleagues and friends. Rising Media Stars gave me a lot of confidence in that space, confidence in how to carry myself, and be a professional in this space as an analyst and how to walk into teams and not take away from what teams are trying to do but still cover the game, cover the stories and try to connect with the athletes.”
It was following Rising Media Stars that ESPN gave Carter more opportunities to hone her on camera skills in the SEC Network studio alongside two of her good friends, Alyssa Lang and Steffi Sorensen, on the sidelines by filling in as a G-League sideline reporter, and serving as a sideline reporter for the Southeastern Conference (SEC) women’s basketball tournament directly before COVID-19 shut down sports in 2020.
Carter credits Lang and Sorensen and the entire SEC Network team for helping her find her voice and personality on air. She said, “That was the first time I truly felt comfortable being myself. I was on set with two people that I enjoyed so much, and it didn’t feel like cameras were there anymore. We had great chemistry and so much fun.”
It was in 2021, that Carter began to pick up more steam and ESPN recognized her ability to contribute as a sideline reporter, but also in her preparation that would allow her to cover other sports outside of basketball. Again, what separates Carter from others in the field is her level of preparation for any situation or room she walks into paired with her innate ability to connect with athletes and coaches alike.
It was around this time that ESPN began to notice her budding talent and uncanny ability to weave analysis and storytelling together. She said, “When people all around ESPN got word of my ability to sideline report and my ability to prep, then they trusted I could do that in any sport. That’s how working football, softball, and beach volleyball happened. I wanted to show everyone, no matter what sport, that I could be prepared, I would be easy to work with, I would connect with the athletes, I would put my best foot forward, I would be able to pivot, and I would be able to adjust to adversity.”
To others observing from the outside, it seems so linear that Carter was on screen at every turn from 2017 covering a multitude of sports for ESPN, but Carter’s journey was much more intricate and laborious than it appears. She stated, “Now people say, ‘I want to be on ESPN as fast as you were’ or ‘I want to do these things as fast as you are’ and I’m like ‘I started on TV in 2017.’ It might seem fast because of these last three years, but my first time calling a game was online in 2016.”
As Carter managed her part-time work for ESPN from 2017-2021, she supplemented this work by coaching at Orangetheory fitness, training kids, walking dogs, babysitting, tutoring, serving as a graduate assistant with Tennessee’s Thornton Center for athletic advising, and even selling crown molding for Woodgrain Distribution.
Mad Dog applauds Andraya Carter after she corrects him.
“She blew away Stevie A, you are good!” pic.twitter.com/bsR3r1gs93
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 12, 2024
There is no doubt Carter was willing to hustle for more opportunities and her willingness to take on a wide array of assignments allowed her to officially receive a full-time contract with ESPN in 2021 and it was during this time that she returned to the sport she knew and loved in basketball.
However, this led to hard but deliberate decision making surrounding her workload management, she reflected “When I was asked to do the NBA draft there was also word that I was going to potentially do men’s College Gameday and that I would do some NBA coverage and my role for the W would increase. So, I was doing all these other sports, but more basketball producers started reaching out to me more and there was just too much overlap. I couldn’t work softball anymore because the WNBA wanted to use me more, college football sideline reporting started taking its toll because I was doing the WNBA Finals, and I had a show called Out of Pocket with Alyssa Lang on SEC Network, and it wasn’t sustainable. I enjoyed that show so much because we are such good friends, it was ours, and two women with their own football show isn’t something you see often but I had to walk away and, thankfully, she was so understanding.”
Fast forward to spring 2023, Carter arrived on the campus of the University of Massachusetts-Boston to deliver the keynote address for the second annual Equity in Sport Leadership conference to a packed room of students. Despite having a fully packed schedule coming off the 2023 March Madness tournaments, and having gone almost seven years without seeing one another, when I called, Carter never hesitated to take the opportunity to come and share about her career path and engage with future sport leaders, many of whom had dreams of working in sport media.
In the days and weeks after her visit, students were enamored by her kindness and the amount of time she gave each student she encountered. One former student, Josfer Gonzalez, who met Carter during this time period said, “Getting to meet Andraya was truly an honor, she took time giving every single individual who had any questions related to her career advice and was even willing to take a look at my sports media work while providing thoughtful feedback that I still use to this day. This was undoubtedly my most impactful learning experience meeting a professional in the industry.”
This generosity is engrained in who Carter is, it is something I have felt from her personally and watched her give others a hundred times over. She makes a concentrated effort to give back and open doors to help the next generation of sport media members, but also to honor the spirit of being a Volunteer, “Really the start of my career and all the way through has been people believing in me and giving me opportunities and Tennessee was and still is the first to really do that.”
While Carter has been an analyst staple on ESPN’s networks over the past three years since 2021, her work alongside Chiney Ogwumike, and Elle Duncan on Women College Basketball and WNBA Countdown shows has shown the surge of interest in women’s basketball and a need for Carter’s detailed and high-level analysis of game performances, defensive schemes, and offensive sets and plays.
The shows featuring Carter, Ogwumike, and Duncan broke records in 2024, their coverage and analysis during 2024 March Madness tournament leading up to the championship game registered 2.9 million viewers, the 2024 WNBA Draft averaged 2.4 million viewers, up 328% compared to 2023, WNBA Countdown averaged 429,000 viewers, up 80% from the previous season.
There is magic when the trio come together on ESPN, but Carter credits their collective success to authenticity, she said, “There’s authenticity in us as individuals but there’s also genuine authenticity in our friendships. All three of us want each other to shine. All three of us know how to set each other up, know how to pick on each other, know how to connect to each other on air because we know each other so well. It just creates this dynamic that people at home, as we learned, felt like they were in on it with us.”
Further, Carter recognizes the timing of the women’s sport surge in addition to the trio’s ability to captivate and entertain audiences created the perfect storm where viewership numbers and interest in women’s basketball exploded.
She said, “It was three things: the real estate we had with so many games and shows to build and connect to people, plus the product that was incredible because the players put on a show every single day, plus our dynamic as a trio. I think those three things just created an explosion that was really special to be a part of.”
As we look at the surge of women’ sports, particularly women’s basketball, Carter feels we would be remiss if we didn’t situate the new era where athletes can build a brand for themselves outside of basketball and have brought in more eyeballs to the game than ever before. She stated, “When we talk about Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark, Paige Beuckers, and Juju Watkins, these are players that have been able to build a brand outside of basketball and you see them everywhere. It’s so cool because the brands are bought in and that gets more fans bought in, and as more fans are bought in, more brands are brought in and it creates this wheel that is now supporting itself, that we didn’t have before. You think about it before and brands wouldn’t buy in because there wasn’t visibility, so ads weren’t selling, so we weren’t putting women’s sports on TV because there weren’t ads to support it, it was a wheel that was going backwards. Now we have a wheel that’s going forward in terms of visibility and opportunity.”
This in turn has created a new basketball ecosystem that was unprecedented in women’s basketball, Carter asserts, “There are fans of individuals [now]. We didn’t necessarily see that in the W space, not to this degree. Wherever Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark go in their careers, their fans will follow faithfully. Their fans will follow in the hardest, toughest, most faithful way. I think Paige Beuckers fans will be the same way and Juju Watkins fans will be the same way because they’ve attached themselves to these players while they’re in college. Then, when they go from college to the league there’s a direct translation where maybe they’re not watching UConn anymore, but they’re always going to watch Paige or maybe they’re not watching USC anymore but they’re still watching Juju.”
As the hunt for the next women’s college basketball national champion has begun and there are new professional leagues (Athletes Unlimited and Unrivaled) outside of the W for fans to watch women’s basketball, Carter hopes that the fans that were enamored with women’s basketball this past season including superstar rookies Clark and Reese come back this season for more. She said, “What I hope happens is that people who tuned in to watch Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese – among the rest of that rookie class – fell in love with the game and come back for more. I hope we have a ton of eyes on the college game because we have some truly talented players who are really fun to watch. I hope as people fell in love with certain individual players, they also fell in love with the game and continue to support the game.”
Furthermore, Carter hopes that fans continue to have an insatiable hunger for women’s basketball consumption, “My hope is that the conversation around women’s sports and women’s basketball continues to grow and thrive. Hopefully we can connect [W and Unrivaled] fans back to the college game and connect fans of the college game to the professional game that’s happening and create this crossover where people are talking about women’s basketball all throughout the year, which is the goal. You have college fans, you have fans of the pro game, and you’ve got women’s basketball fans who just want to watch these athletes all the time. That’s what I hope happens. I have so much respect for the players and coaches, and I hope to do my part in an entertaining and informative way to keep growing the game.”
