By the time the calendar turns to Monday morning, Wes Durham finally has a reprieve after a long week of preparation and subsequent execution as he calls play-by-play for games within the Atlantic Coast Conference and National Football League. Durham’s weekend during the season lasts from the moment he wakes up on Monday until about 1 p.m. the same day before the cycle officially repeats itself.
This upcoming weekend, Durham will be calling a matchup between the Florida Atlantic Owls and Clemson Tigers on the ACC Network, and he has prepared by watching both team contests and taking notes about players and details on the field. A similar premise applies to the Sunday NFL matchup featuring the Atlanta Falcons against the Green Bay Packers, which he will call as the radio voice of the Falcons.
In the next few days, Durham has the luxury of being able to drive to work, but he often finds himself on his fair share of red-eye flights. Frequently visiting collegiate practice facilities and conversing with coaches in pre-production meetings, the quantitative portion of his preparation occurs towards the end of the week.
As that is taking place, Durham is reading injury reports, game notes and viewing press conferences at the NFL level with the goal of being nearly ready to call that game by Saturday morning. Several production calls ensue over the final few days with the ESPN-owned ACC Network before he announces that matchup on prime time television. From the time he started calling Falcons games 20 years ago on the radio up until now, he has ensured to never take a day for granted in being one of the few commentators to call both collegiate and professional football games simultaneously.
“It’s funny – Bob Wischusen, Dave Pasch and I are the guys who work for ESPN who also do the NFL,” Durham said. “I think all of us feel fortunate in many respects to… work for teams that support your ability to do two-for-one – they support you where they can, [and] I think that’s really important.”
Durham knew early on in his career that play-by-play would be the industry niche for him, but he also possessed the specialized skill set needed to succeed in sports talk radio. The first time he ever took the air was on WCHL in Chapel Hill, N.C., the locale’s primeval media outlet, where he would play music at night. Durham estimates that people down the road were unable to hear the station.
Through his four years at Elon University, Durham called 150 football and basketball games on the radio and graduated with a portfolio larger than most other college-aged students at the time. Entering the professional workforce with an understanding of how to correct common mistakes and stand out – and a clear picture of where he wanted his career to go. Interning under sports director Mark Concannon at WFMY-TV, Durham quickly stood out for his sports acumen and professionalism. Towards the end of his internship, Concannon told him that while he could foresee him doing well reporting on sports for television news, his passion for play-by-play shined through.
Before that time, Durham worked in Burlington, N.C. as a high school student calling local football games so he would have an array of experience before going to college. Being in the area, he fostered a relationship with Bill Leslie, who served as the morning news anchor at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C. Despite working in different genres per se, Leslie conferred years of experience and wisdom to him, specifically discussing bedrock journalistic principles such as elocution and syntax.
Throughout his formative years, Durham sent out his demo reel to various local broadcasters, including Jeff Charles, the longtime voice of the East Carolina Pirates who passed away earlier this year, and received constructive criticism. Durham, however, recognized at the very instant he declared his interest in sports media that he had known his greatest mentor for his entire life.
Woody Durham, the legendary play-by-play announcer for the North Carolina Tar Heels, worked in sports media for parts of six decades and became synonymous with college athletics. One summer day during his adolescence, Wes mentioned to his father that he may want to become involved in radio and television.
His father immediately said, “Okay, if you’re serious about doing it, then we need to find you some ways to have practical experience.” From shadowing his dad in the press box and eventually serving as a production assistant for the radio network, Durham compiled a résumé and an invaluable set of professional connections.
“I’m obviously fortunate that my dad was in the business for as long as he was,” Durham said. “I think that was an introduction at the time that I didn’t realize the impact it was having.”
Durham bases the way he prepares for games off of his father’s process. Woody used to compose his charts by hand ahead of every broadcast. As computers developed the capabilities to simplify labyrinthine tasks, Durham decided to digitize his game charts and additional notes. When he explained what he did to his father, the reply he received was, “You know what that is right there? That’s cheating!”
Even though he had developed a shortcut, Durham did not pare back the work that went into his assignments. He was able to immediately secure a broadcast job out of college calling games for the Radford Highlanders before spending a year with the Marshall Thundering Herd. In 1992, Vanderbilt University hired Durham to call Commodores games at the age of 26, something that was suspect to some sports media professionals and fans.
Durham assimilated into the ACC in 1995 – a conference he knew well thanks to his father – when he was named the voice of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and called football, basketball and baseball games for 18 years. Durham was hired by Dr. Homer Rice, the same athletic director who hired his father 24 years earlier to call games for the University of North Carolina. No matter how long he works for a particular institution though, he feels an obligation to perform to the best of his ability.
“You are essentially signing up to represent that institution,” Durham said. “….Even in this transition of college athletics, you still have to some degree of understanding of not just the athletic program and the sport you’re covering, but also the fact that you’re pretty much a representative of that institution in many ways.”
The desire to be able to retire having no regrets, however, compelled him to leave Georgia Tech and take a job with Fox Sports Net calling college football games nationally on television.
“Some of that was inspired by my dad, but some of that was also inspired by just wanting to do something different,” Durham said. “I think you’ve got to be willing to understand that the path to success is going to be different.”
One of many things he is grateful for in his time with Georgia Tech is the fact that the university allowed him to call Atlanta Falcons games and become the voice of an NFL team. Being able to have connectivity to a marketplace through collegiate and professional sports, along with eventually hosting a local sports talk radio program, is something he considers as a blessing. The key to his success has been cultivating ethos and credence with listeners so he and partner Dave Archer are able to objectively call games without having to impugn genuine situations.
“I think that’s the way people want it,” Durham said. “Fortunately for us, we’ve done it, for now, such a time that I think people trust us with the way the broadcast sounds, and they trust the way we’re going to broadcast the game – win or lose – [is] that we’re going to be as upfront as we can about the way it’s going down.”
While Durham has been paired with Archer for the last two decades, it was not until recently when he began working ACC Network games with Tim Hasselbeck. The former NFL quarterback has been on the prime time matchups since 2019 and previously worked alongside Dave O’Brien, who is no longer on the broadcasts. Roddy Jones was Durham’s partner during those early years, and the transition to working with Hasselbeck has been seamless.
“Tim has really, really been so kind in terms of answering my questions about, ‘Is this okay if this is the way I hand it to you in the open to start what we’re going to talk about?,’” Durham said. “For me, he’s got such a vast football knowledge, and his evaluation of players, particularly quarterbacks, is just second-to-none.”
There is a difference, however, in the way that Durham works with his analyst depending on the platform. Whereas television is a visual medium, radio requires an approach that relies on vivid depictions and the cultivation of an image to accurately and effectively disseminate an event to the audience.
“If it’s a radio game, the play-by-play guy is obviously going to be more involved in the verbiage with description and things like that,” Durham explained. “When I went to television, I was always thinking about, ‘Okay, how can I pitch the perfect game with the bigger team?,’ because you’ve got more people involved, obviously, in TV.”
The Walt Disney Company is in the midst of a 20-year media rights deal with the ACC for a reported $240 million annually. It is one of the longest contracts in the college sports ecosystem and is compelling select schools to look for a raise in fees. At the start of next season, the conference will add Cal, Stanford and SMU to the fold, bringing it to 17 teams stretching across the United States.
“We figured out a way to go from the BCS to the CFP, but when we expand to 12 teams for the College Football Playoff and the money that’s going to be involved in that television deal, we’re going to look at this sport in a way we’ve never looked at it,” Durham said. “I think we all have to be flexible and nimble enough… to understand the game may change dynamically once we get there.”
As a broadcaster, Durham stays aware of industry trends and works to enrich his craft on a daily basis. He does not call collegiate and professional games just so he can remain within a select group, but rather because he genuinely enjoys the craft. Being respected by his colleagues and other broadcasters, along with having veneration for them, makes it easier to be himself rather than acquiescing to the opinions of a faction of people.
After enduring the difficulties associated with the onset of a global pandemic, resulting in the abeyance of sporting events, Durham’s realization of how lucky he is to work in the industry was only accentuated. Each time he walks into a stadium, he has the same energy he did on the day of his first broadcast, eager to see something new or unexpected no matter the sport.
Football is Durham’s primary focus, but he has also called several PGA events on ESPN+ in the last couple of years. In his free time, he often reads about the game of golf – everything from the gear to strength training – and hopes that he will be afforded more chances to augment his versatility.
Durham also remembers becoming inspired by the SEC Storied film More Than a Voice on SEC Network that shined a spotlight on iconic radio voices within the conference. Award-winning singer and songwriter Kenny Chesney served as executive producer on the project in an effort to spotlight John Ward, the eminent radio voice of the Tennessee Volunteers. “The King of the Road” affirmed that Ward was on the soundtrack of his childhood and one of the reasons he came to love watching sports.
“I would like to do a documentary about radio voices,” Durham said. “I think the chronicle of the radio announcer is fascinating – the way it’s just tied with the history of college football and just college football in general.”
As broadcasters look to penetrate through the competitive field, there is an incessant feeling of impatience and impetuosity that has pervaded various people in all professional spaces. Unequivocally so, success in media can be attributed to not just work ethic and abilities, but also timing. When people act intentionally and take calculated risks that they believe will further their career, there is a chance it may not engender success – but more often than not, a byproduct of such efforts is a pertinent learning experience. For Durham, doing just that has led him to have a multiplatform presence in sports, and it is something he hopes to keep for years to come.
“The one core thing that is always really important is to be patient,” Durham said. “I think everybody’s journey to any kind of success is one that you have to have some degree of patience with.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
