Elle Duncan is a real one.
The Atlanta native is one of the most popular sports broadcasters on ESPN and in media today. Besides having a deep knowledge of sports as a former athlete (She was a softball phenom), Duncan’s magnetic personality, love of Hip Hop and pop culture is what makes her so unique in the industry. She gives off good vibes. But Duncan is by no means an overnight success. She had to put in the work.
Prior to joining ESPN in 2016, the State University of West Georgia alumnus began her career in 2003 as an entertainment reporter for former Atlanta sports radio station 790 the Zone. In 200, she began a seven-year stint as an on-air personality with Atlanta hip-hop station V103 where she hosted a top-rated program. Also, she was a co-host of pre-game, halftime and post-game shows for the Atlanta Falcons Radio Network in 2010-2011.
Duncan was a sideline reporter for the Atlanta Hawks for six years and a field reporter for Comcast Sports South on SEC and ACC football for two years. After relocating to the New England area, Duncan worked for New England Sports Network (NESN) in Boston, hosting the daily NESN Live and NESN Sports Today programs.
In May of this year, Duncan became an anchor for SportsCenter, ESPN’s signature news and information program at 6 pm and in June, she was named co-host of First Take, Her Take podcast.
I spoke with Elle about her love of music and her background as a DJ, the misconceptions about Atlanta sports fans, hosting ESPN’s flagship program at prime time, and why women’s voices and perspectives are so important in media.
Grove: One thing that’s evident about Elle Duncan is not only your sports acumen but your knowledge of music and pop culture.
Duncan: Wow. I'm so glad that I have a chance to talk to you about sports and music especially. I tell ESPN PR all the time. that I would love to talk about music too. I'm like, I had a whole other life as a DJ and a radio personality and music is such a huge part of who I am. So if you ever want me to talk to people about music or anything like that, like, you know, I'd love to do that too.
Grove: Tell me about how was music part of your life growing up.
Duncan: Yeah, it's funny because my earliest memories are legit of my mom and dad yelling at me and my sister to stop breaking their damn record player. They just had crates of records and music has always just been a really big part of my family. It’s in my DNA. I don't have the best memory in the world so I always have to sort of use some kind of device that helps me remember things. That's really how my whole life is connected to music. So even when I was young, I would be experiencing these things that I wanted you to remember. So when I wanted to recall something, it had to be synonymous with music. So every time I heard a particular song, I would think of that place that I wanted to remember.
Grove: You mentioned that you were a DJ and a radio personality. How did you break into radio?
Duncan: So doing sports radio as an intern, I ended up getting a job playing hip hop, urban AC radio at V-103 in Atlanta and it was so unintentional. I mean, I sort of stumbled into it. I was doing traffic but on this particular show, the host would let me talk a lot. Eventually, it formed into an eight-year relationship and we had a very successful radio show. That was amazing but I still very much at some point started feeling unfulfilled because sports began calling me again. I love music but I just felt like talking about sports and being on TV were some things that I could do on television that I couldn't do on radio that lends itself a little bit more to my personality. So that was essentially why I wanted to shift.
Grove: You were doing radio during a time when Atlanta Hip Hop was exploding into the mainstream, eventually becoming the most influential sound in rap music. How was it to be on the radio during that era?
Duncan: Absolutely. I started working at V-103 around 2004 or 2005. I was definitely in the thick of it with trap music and you know, everyone fighting over whether that was real or not, snap music and every iteration of the music like Soulja Boy. I have vivid memories of playing “Pretty Boy Swag,” and seeing the whole club go crazy. It’s so funny and it dates me so much now, but I was getting out of radio as we were really starting to see guys like Future take off and Migos were just the “Bando” guys back then
Grove: This may be a tough one for you but give me your Top 5 Atlanta rappers?
Duncan: Gotcha. Okay, so I'll just give you my top five like when I miss home this is who I'm listening to. So I'm going to listen to OutKast. I’m 38 so I'm going to listen to Raheem The Dream. I love him so much. I'm definitely going to sprinkle in some Kilo. If I'm trying to reminisce, I'm like a real Young Bloods fan. To throw it back, there's probably going to be something So So Def-related. I just tried to play “Run Forrest Run” for my daughter and she was like, “What the hell is this?”
So when I think of Atlanta, I tend to go more old school. But I would say that in terms of influence and whatnot, I mean, you can't deny the influence of Future. I think Future is one of the most imitated rappers out there. Oh, I almost forgot one of my favorites, Gucci. I'm gonna definitely say Gucci.
Grove: How does your music influence inform your sports analysis and broadcasting?
Duncan: Oh, my gosh, there's just so many hours of programming at ESPN and there are so many smart people that have so many things to say, at the same time, like, you know, we're all sort of dealt this hand where we're forced to talk about the same things, right? I guess I just always felt like the one interesting wrinkle that I could bring is to try to make parallels, whether that's like, with cultural references or music references. I would say that's sort of how I incorporate my love of music and entertainment into what I do. I'm going to drop different lines in a highlight and are probably going to weave in some kind of lyric from something or cultural reference into an on-camera. I was so inspired growing up watching Stuart Scott who was like the first guy to really embrace the idea that the E and ESPN stands for entertainment first. Like, that's what we're here to do. I think what we do and music both fall on that same line. There's just a really interesting synergy between the both.
Grove: You have definitely taken the torch and you are the Stuart Scott of this generation.
Duncan: Wow. Thanks so much. That’s an honor for you to say.
Grove: Let me ask you this. As the city of Atlanta celebrates the success of the Atlanta Hawks, in your opinion, what defines an Atlanta sports fan?
Duncan: Pain and misery. I feel like people always sh*t on Atlanta sports fans, like no one cares in Atlanta. But the thing is we've actually been dealt many significant blows. It's so much deeper than 28 to 3 like it's, it's generational trauma of watching your teams across the spectrum collapse in the most epic of ways. See, the Browns are known to be like, lovable losers or whatever, right? The Bills, same thing with all their Super Bowls. But when your city is synonymous with simply collapsing, like not showing up, just falling apart, time and time and time and time and time again, it takes a lot to every year, dust yourself back off and go again. Okay, I'm gonna to root for the Falcons again this year, right? Despite the fact that they don't even know the rules of an onside kick. That kind of stuff that just keeps happening to Atlanta fans. So I would say what defines them is resiliency. I mean, to keep showing up when you only have one championship in your entire city across all of the sports and everything else has ended so miserably. It’s just it's brutal.
Grove: You have given me hope as a Philly sports fan.
Duncan: I mean, you gotta stop it. You guys have the Eagles. You won in baseball recently. You also don't collapse. I mean, you beat Tom Brady, right? Like we collapse
Grove: With all of that trauma you endured as an Atlanta fan, what is your earliest sports memory?
Duncan: Wow. I would say when I was maybe six or seven and the NCAA tournament was in Atlanta at the Georgia Dome. I just remember my dad taking us because they had all these games going on the court at that time and just seeing all of these different things are happening at once. When I think about what informed my level of sports, it's just Sundays with my parents yelling at the TV. Especially if the Broncos were on national television because my dad loved them. I think overall, when I think about sports in general, my earliest memories of sports is playing. Me and my sister were raised on a softball field. She and I played softball, every year, from the time that I was three to 18 years old. Our summers were committed to traveling for softball. So our whole childhood was spent, playing softball, and it was amazing. I got to meet a lot of amazing people. I got to see the country playing softball, and it's truly where my level of sports was formed and my understanding of how important teamwork is.
Grove: How did your time in radio prepare you to go to Boston and then when you began at ESPN?
Duncan: It's funny because with radio you just talk so much and you're constantly having to ad-lib. Nothing is scripted and you're just trying to come up with compelling and engaging content in real-time for hours at a time. So the beauty with having that sort of background is that if I can fill four hours, I can do 30-40 seconds, right? I can do breaking news. Those transferable skills actually work really well. When you're in a breaking news situation, or when you're in a situation where you're just having a conversation, which is exactly what you do on the radio, right? When you're on the radio, you tend to be a little bit more yourself and show more of your personality. You have to because you're just talking for 30 minutes to an hour straight. I try to bring some of that casualness I had on the radio to TV.
Grove: How did it feel when you got the call that you would be anchoring the prime time edition of SportsCenter?
Duncan: Yeah, it was nice because when I found out I would be hosting SportsCenter at 6, I was about to have my son and he’s seven months old now. It was like my last day of work before I was going on maternity leave. The next day, I got a call that I would be hosting SportsCenter when I got back from maternity leave, and I was like, “Whoa!”
In general, getting the call to be a SportsCenter anchor is incredible for anyone that loves sports, right? That's how we were raised watching sports. It's the preeminent name in sports broadcasting and it was s so cool. The 6 pm SportsCenter holds so much significance because of who's hosted it before. It felt really special to get that call and I was so grateful to have the opportunity to work with Kevin Negandhi and work with that show group and bring who I am and also grow and evolve too.
Every time you work with a new partner, you take a piece of their talent with you, you know something that you recognize in them that's really special and you try to do things in that way. And Kevin is such a pro, he’s so thorough and he's a good dude. I just really take a lot from him. So it's a beautiful show that we are hoping we'll continue to get more eyes and we're grateful to talk to people like you about it.
Grove: Not only did you began hosting the prime time slot of SportsCenter this year, but you joined First Take, Her Take. What was the process like for you to jump back into audio content?
Duncan: I got a call from my boss, Dave Roberts and he told me that Chiney Ogwumike had a lot going on and she's hosting First Take, Her Take and she needs to step back. The show group thought that you would be a great person to step into that role. I always loved doing radio, I still do some stuff on the ESPN Radio, I love to run my damn mouth, so it was a great fit because I've been trying to get into the podcast world.
The different perspectives between me, Charly Arnolt and Kimberly Martin are fantastic. It's an hour out of my week but it's so gratifying. It really helps fill my cup because they're sort of just microphones in front of our face but we're just talking about life, sports and anything that comes up. It's almost like girlfriend time.
But what I really love about the podcast and I think about women, in general, is that we're just so varied. Because while we can talk about things as surface, as you know, a new lip gloss, right? We can also really do a lot of introspecting about things that matter and are important, like how the media treated Sha’ Carri Richardson or the nuance of being vaccinated. We get into all kinds of topics and we don't shy away from them. So it's been a fun six weeks or so since I started doing it.
Grove: Rarely do men get asked how do they balance their family lives and their careers. How do we normalize women doing their thing, however they want to do and when they want to do it?
Duncan: Well, I mean, I think one of the ways to normalize it is to make sure that paternity leave matches maternity leave, right? I mean it's very clear from a company's perspective when you give a father either no time off, or make them take a vacation or a week off and you give the mother eight weeks off, you're already telling the mother that her sacrifice for her career needs to be greater and more impactful.
I mean, that's what you're doing right? Trust me when I say, boy, we need more than eight weeks. I mean, we need so much time, right? But the idea that you don't either offer it or you offer very little of it for men just tells you right away how companies feel which is that men got to get back to work and bring home the bacon, which is a very antiquated way to think.
People keep asking me, “How can you do it all? I'm like, “I only am able to survive, because I have the support system of like, I have an entire village.” Rashad, I have a country behind me helping me with these children. It starts with my husband and extends to my grandparents. I'm so fortunate enough that I make a good enough living that I can hire a nanny so that when the kid center closed down during the pandemic, I could still have help with my kids. I’m the exception and not the rule and we need to start normalizing giving women space and flexibility that they need and not punishing them. Should they need to leave for a sick child, should they need to leave because of a recital, whether you think it's significant or not, is important that day. We need to normalize those kinds of things so that women feel comfortable being in the workplace and not having to choose because if you make a woman choose between her job and her family, she's going to choose her family. But at the same time, she's going to resent everyone for it and it's such an unfair and enviable position to be in.
