In school, when her friends and classmates adorned walls with musical artists and movie stars, Alyssa Lang decorated her bedroom with a journalistic flair.
“I pinned newspaper clips on my wall because I was obsessed,” she said with a chuckle. “Honestly, it dawned on me one day that it wasn’t something I ever had to stop doing.”
There were signs where her career would take her. Begin with the passion for college football – Virginia Tech, in particular. Then there was the meeting with her parents at school, when the teacher said she had a career in public speaking.
“I thought to myself, ‘I can do that for a living.’ After that, there was no Plan B.”
As a new dawn of a new era of Southeastern Conference football begins, Lang has emerged as a face of the SEC Network. It means working six-and-a-half days a week, covering games on Saturdays, and hosting shows including “SEC Now” and “Out of Pocket” during the week – with some occasional moonlighting on the ESPN SportsCenter desk either in Bristol, Connecticut or Los Angeles.
There are also twice-a-week gigs on SEC Radio for XM. You want downtime? Maybe in another lifetime.
“In my head, the week begins Wednesday with ‘Out of Pocket.’ I typically travel out on Thursdays for the game I’m covering. Hopefully, I return Saturday night. Then I spend Sunday watching the teams I didn’t get to see play the day before. Every hour is accounted for, so I try to take off Monday, beginning at noon, and do something that’s not football related. It doesn’t always work out, but it beats working for a living.”
It Started With the Hokies
For Lang it all started in Blacksburg, Virginia. Lang grew up in Huntersville, North Carolina, just north of her current base of Charlotte. During the heyday of Virginia Tech football, Lang and her parents made the 2 ½-hour drive to see the Hokies play.
The memories are idyllic. Visits with her grandparents, catching up with friends in program tailgates and the roar of the crowd that echoed across the campus.
She wanted to attend Virginia Tech and continue the family lineage there.
“But it was more of an engineering school,” she said. “Academic scholarships made it more reasonable to go to (the University of) South Carolina. It had everything I wanted, from a great football team and athletics to a great journalism school.”
It had everything I wanted, from a great football team and athletics to a great journalism school.
Alyssa Lang
It also had opportunities for a budding broadcaster, including the chance to work on the television station and beyond.
She quickly landed a role with the local CBS affiliate. She parlayed that into shooting high school football games on Friday nights and desk assignments on the weekend – after putting together a highlights package from the games she covered.
As a senior, she learned there was a full-time weekend opening on the sports team and made her pitch.
“I went to the news director, who was in the middle of something crazy like hurricane coverage, and said, ‘Hey, the weekend guy is leaving. I’ll do it.’ By some stroke of luck, she said yes. And I signed the contract the August starting my senior year.”
Repping the Rap
In the nine years since, she’s had a meteoric climb, from Columbia’s WLTX to SPEEDTV and WCNC in Charlotte.
But it was an off-the-cuff rap song that led her to ESPN and the SEC Network.
“At 18, I thought I was pretty funny. I wrote a rap – and I use that term loosely – about South Carolina football. It became my party trick.”
On the first day of class, playing around with a new laptop for class, she turned on the webcam and recorded a performance that went straight to YouTube.
“A couple of weeks later, I get an email from a producer at ESPNU named Baron Miller who said they wanted to use the rap on ‘College Football Daily.’ He said, ‘Can I use it?’ And I said, ‘absolutely.’ And if you ever need me in studio, I’m just down the road in Columbia.”
That led her to performing live in front of ESPN co-hosts Matt Schick and Jason Sehorn.
“I’m not sure they knew what they were getting into.”
But ESPN did. She and Miller stayed in touch. Three years after she graduated from college, Miller, a coordinating producer, called alerting her to an audition that would lead to joining the ESPN family.
“I tell students all the time, of course, it was the relationship that I had years earlier that led to the job.”
‘Elope,’ He Said
She’s still going viral for all the right reasons.
Covering a Mississippi State game a few years ago, she faced the task of a postgame interview with Bulldogs coach Mike Leach, who wasn’t always the best at answering game-specific questions. But if you got him off topic, you could discover gold.
“I asked him at Halloween about candy corn, knowing he wasn’t a fan.”
What she got was 2 minutes of a hilarious monologue that became the darling of social media.
Flash forward a season – sadly, Leach’s final one before his untimely death – and she got another Mississippi State assignment.
“Everyone asked, ‘What are you going to ask him this time?’ My ESPN crew said, ‘You need to ask him about your wedding.’”
Her plan was to stick to the game, but Leach again seemed disengaged.
“I asked him two or three football questions, and he didn’t seem that interested. My producer was in my ear saying ask about the wedding.”
So she shot her shot. And once again, Mike Leach delivered.
“As soon as the season’s over, or even an off week, go elope,” Leach responded.
Lang laughs at the memory.
“He was right. I really know that now as I’m planning for the wedding,” she said.
The day will come soon – after the football season, of course, Lang and her fiancé, Trevor Sikkema, plan to honor Leach by having a pirate flag fly at the ceremony.
3 Questions With Alyssa Lang
We’re asking this, before the start of the season: Do you have a dark horse team that’s not getting the attention it deserves?
I said this this morning to Trevor. When we’re in our SEC bubble, we talk about Tennessee a lot, and they’re never a dark horse. But I saw on a national show that Tennessee had a 6 percent chance of making playoffs. If Nico (Iamaleava, the quarterback) can be what he’s capable of being – we saw flashes in the bowl game – this is a very talented team. I look at the improvements on defense, the receiving corps – I’m really excited to see what this team does.
Are Texas and Oklahoma in for a shock joining the SEC or will they shock people instead?
Culturally, and from a passion standpoint, they are SEC ready. Texas was so close to the national championship last season. While both teams have been building toward this, I think Texas is a little closer, but I think Oklahoma could surprise some people. Those saying Oklahoma is not ready may be surprised.
What will the College Football Playoff look like in 10 years?
When we first started talking expansion, I was totally against it. I felt the four-team playoff achieved everything and the best team was winning – until last year, when (undefeated) Florida State gets left out. Now, I’m curious to see how the lower seeds will do. Until we see parity, I’m against expanding again.
But the 12-team format, with home games the first round, is going to be awesome. The only thing I’d change is giving the top four seeds home games. I’d rather do that instead of a bye, because I love the home-crowd atmosphere. Maybe we’ll see that – in 10 years or so.