In December 2024, Wes Durham received an unexpected text. It was from Elon University President Connie Book. Book had texted Durham, asking if she could give him a call. Once they finalized a time and got on the phone together, Book asked if he would be the 2025 commencement speaker, giving him the opportunity to address graduates inside Schar Center on May 23, 2025.
At first, the class of 1988 alum thought she was joking. Once he realized she was serious, he immediately accepted it, realizing the honor of it and relishing the chance to reconnect with Elon.
“Of all the things I've been blessed with in my career to do, this might be the highest highlight, highest honor for me,” Durham said. “It gives me an opportunity to come back to campus and refamiliarize myself with not only the Elon I attended and went to school with, and the Elon I'm still connected to, but now what the real Elon is in 2024 and 2025.”
Durham graduated from Elon with a bachelor’s degree in mass communications and has gone on to become an accomplished play-by-play commentator for ESPN and ACC Network. He has also served as the radio play-by-play voice for the Atlanta Falcons since 2004, which allowed him to call the 2017 Super Bowl. Durham was one of the first hires when ACC Network launched in 2019, and now calls weekly-high profile games for ACC Primetime Football, along with being the one of ACCN’s lead game-caller for men’s college basketball.
Durham is a widely celebrated sports broadcaster, having been inducted into the Georgia Tech Sports Hall of Fame in 2015 and is an 11-time winner of the Georgia Sportscaster of the Year award by the National Sports Media Association. In 2022, he became the president of the NSMA board. He also received the Distinguished Alumni Award in the School of Communications at Elon.
Durham visited Elon’s campus Feb. 11 to get a sense of the feel of campus. He attended College Coffee, met faculty and students and talked to a sport management class. Durham will return to campus two more times before commencement in May.
“It was fun to go to College Coffee, connect with some people, meet some new people who I didn't know, and just feel what the vibe of the campus is this time of year,” Durham said. “I hope to have a pretty good feel for, not just what the campus goes through in this year, but also, in particular, what the senior class goes through, because that's the one that's graduating.”
Although this visit has involved the most interaction with faculty and students, Durham said this is the fourth or fifth time he has returned to campus since graduating. Durham has a special connection here to always come back to his brother, Taylor Durham ’96. Taylor is known as the “Voice of the Phoenix” and calls Elon football, basketball and baseball games.
Durham has fond memories of his time at Elon, a time where he called 150 football and basketball games for WSOE 89.3 FM. He feels blessed that he got to attend Elon at a time where the School of Communications was in its early stages. Durham was in the first four-year graduating class in which a communications degree existed. According to Durham, a communications degree was an idea when he arrived in the fall of 1984, and degrees began to be awarded in the following years until 1988 when the Department of Journalism and Communications was founded.
Durham said it was interesting to see the school grow from its roots to where it is today. He is grateful for the opportunities Elon gave him in college, believing that the experience he got at WSOE helped him land his first job. Durham is thankful for his time at Elon because he believes it taught him valuable lessons that helped on the job and in his career. According to Durham, Elon emphasizes collaboration in various ways, a valuable asset to have in the working world.
“You do it in some ways on a social scale, but you do it in organizations and activities and academics, athletics, intramurals, whatever the case may be,” Durham said. “I think that characteristic serves people really well in today's society too, and certainly in our industry. Because I think when you get out of here, you go to work and it's a collaborative piece. Every game we do is a collaboration, not just those of us on the air, but with production and cameras and things like that.”
Durham said he hopes to insert lessons he has learned during his time as a sports broadcaster into his commencement address. Pro Football Hall of Famers Tony Gonzalez and Calvin Johnson Jr. were two players he got to watch during his career, and he said their work ethic inspired him throughout his career. He said they reinforced the idea that success is a constant journey.
“I think it's really important to remember when you leave here with a degree, you're empowered, you're empowered for success, but that success is not a finish line,” Durham said. “You keep moving in it.”
Although he has some ideas brewing, Durham is still in the process of crafting his commencement speech. He said he hopes his visit to campus will help with this because he wants to meet the students and let them shape what he will say.
“I really want it to be about them. They're the ones that are being honored that day. It's not me, although it's an unbelievable honor for me. They're the central figure, the people graduating, who've done the work, who now have a degree,” Durham said. “They really have to kind of tell me the story of what their experience has been.”