For the past several years, the Big Blue Nation has enjoyed Alyssa Lang’s reporting and interviews on television when she is covering UK and SEC games for the SEC Network and ESPN.
While covering a Kentucky football game at Kroger Field in 2021, Lang once tried then-Wildcat (and future NFL quarterback) Will Levis’ banana snack on the air as he often ate a banana, mostly brown, with the peel on.
“It’s not that bad,” the sideline reporter told the audience as she consumed a mostly brown banana with the peel on.
Lang, who joined the SEC Network in 2018, also had memorable chats with then-Mississippi State football coach Mike Leach on various topics. In a postgame interview, she asked about Halloween candy. It was learned that Leach, who once coached at UK, hated candy corn but loved gummy bears. In another interview, the coach even gave her wedding advice.
Leach, who sadly passed away in 2022, was a lovable figure who could talk about any non-football topic. He even earned a law degree from Pepperdine in 1986.
Interestingly, Lang and her fiance Trevor Sikkema, a pro football journalist, married this past weekend, and she even honored Leach by leaving a seat at the venue.
As you may recall, Leach worked at Kentucky for a couple of years as the offensive coordinator under Hal Mumme during the late 1990s while displaying the high-powered Air Raid offense.
I recently caught up with Lang in Lexington when she was working as a sideline reporter for the ESPN telecast of the Kentucky-Arkansas hoops showdown. It was the long-awaited game when former Wildcat boss and current Arkansas coach John Calipari returned to Rupp Arena for the first time since he left UK last spring.
Lang, who grew up in Huntersville, N.C., revealed that her most memorable contest as a broadcast journalist took place recently in Nashville.
“The most memorable game I covered would have to be the Vanderbilt-Alabama football game in 2024,” said an approachable Lang, who has a pleasant personality. “(It was) the first time Vandy had ever beaten a No. 1 team in the country, led by (Vandy QB) Diego Pavia whose passion for football cannot be outmatched.”
While fighting through the jubilant crowd on the field, Lang said she had to chase down Pavia for the postgame interview “in the middle of a crowd storm, and then watching the goal posts be marched down Broadway. It’s the epitome of what makes college football so great. I feel so lucky to have been a small part of the show that night.”
Even though she lived in North Carolina during her childhood, Lang followed Virginia Tech sports. Why Virginia Tech?
“Both of my parents attended Virginia Tech, and it’s truly where my sports fandom was born,” recalled Lang. “Growing up in the era of Frank Beamer football, I got to see some incredible games as a kid. My grandparents lived in Christiansburg, the next town over from Blacksburg, so we were up there a lot even if we didn’t have tickets to the games. We’d still tailgate anyway. To this day, there was nothing like “Enter Sandman” on a Thursday night at Lane Stadium in the early 2000s.”
Jamie H. Vaught, a longtime sports columnist in Kentucky, is the author of six books about UK basketball, including recently-published “Forever Crazy About The Cats: An Improbable Journey of a Kentucky Sportswriter Overcoming Adversity.” Now a retired college professor who taught at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Middlesboro, he is the editor and founder of KySportsStyle.com Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @KySportsStyle or reach him via email at KySportsStyle@gmail.com.Why did Lang pursue a career in journalism?
“I was in high school when I realized that this career was even a possibility,” explained Lang. “Sports, whether I was playing or watching, were always my ‘happy place.’ Knowing that I had an opportunity to bring that happiness to other people by working in the field one day, as well as celebrating the athletes and coaches that make sports so special, was extremely appealing to me for a career.”
And Lang ended up attending the University of South Carolina in Columbia despite her close ties with Virginia Tech. At USC, she received a degree in broadcast journalism in 2015.
“I wanted to go to Virginia Tech because of how special it was throughout my life. I never really wanted to think about going anywhere else,” she said. “When I decided that journalism was the route I wanted to go, my parents and I weren’t convinced that Virginia Tech was the best opportunity I had for going into that field. My dad always said if I wanted to be an engineer, it would be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, math was very much not my strong suit. When I toured South Carolina and saw the broadcast school and opportunities they had, I fell in love with it.”
While in college, she worked at WLTX in Columbia as an intern and later became a sports anchor while covering several teams like USC, Clemson and NFL’s Carolina Panthers. Lang eventually went to Jacksonville in Florida where she was a sports anchor and reporter at First Coast News for two years before joining the ESPN and SEC Network family.
Television/radio personality Paul Finebaum of ESPN and SEC Network praised Lang’s work as a host, anchor and reporter.
“We used to call her a rising star. No longer true,” said Finebaum. “Alyssa is a legitimate star — an absolute rock star. She can do everything from sideline to studio to hosting even our show. That’s a rare gift which makes her extremely marketable and valuable to ESPN. Most important, she’s genuine and likable. She has everything.”
Lang shared her experience about her first-ever trip to Rupp Arena when the Cats hosted the Razorbacks on February 1.
“Rupp was awesome. What a treat for me — I’ve called probably dozens of Kentucky games, just never at Rupp,” said Lang. “And the first game I get is Arkansas, Calipari’s homecoming! I know it didn’t end well for Cats fans, but the buildup and excitement surrounding that game is just part of what makes Lexington and that fan base so special. Everyone kept telling me, ‘You are going to hear Rupp at its loudest tonight.’ I think everyone was 100 percent right.”
Lang recently worked at SEC women’s basketball tournament in Greenville, S.C., as a TV studio host for pregame, halftime and postgame coverage throughout the week. She is very impressed with the women’s programs in the conference. Like SEC basketball fans, Lang has fond memories of watching the SEC teams battle during March Madness.
“The fact that the conference has the last three national titles is so impressive,” Lang said of USC winning it all in 2022 and 2024, and LSU in 2023. “Having been in this league, watching our women’s basketball product first hand, it’s so gratifying to watch the work pay off for these teams. What Dawn Staley has built at South Carolina, with what LSU has brought in the last few years with Coach (Kim) Mulkey, and now the addition of Texas and OU. I think we are very close to seeing another SEC program add another Natty (national championship) very soon.”
We certainly can say Lang, who loved sports while growing up in the ACC territory, is enjoying her current job while covering SEC sports.