ESPNU's Durant keeps roots in S.C.

In so many ways, Rosalyn Durant is a typical small-town girl.
She grew up near Timmonsville, went to Lamar High School, then to college and got the heck out of town for greener pastures.
Don’t let that fool you.
The recently-named vice president and general manager of ESPNU — the TV sports giant’s branch that specializes in college sports — doesn’t work half a dozen states away in Bristol, Conn., because she has those “little town blues” Frank Sinatra sang about in “New York, New York.”
In fact, if Durant’s job couldn’t provide her the means to travel back to Timmonsville every four to six weeks to see her family, it’s doubtful she’d be where she is.
“I tell people that my job is what I do, it’s not who I am,” the 32-year-old said. “Home, that’s who I am. Everything that makes me the person that I am is my roots from South Carolina. I have no reason to try to escape it. It’s a lot of the reason for my success.
“I’m a southern girl. I just live in Bristol.”
Durant said she comes back home so often that “people don’t actually believe I moved away.”
Durant said she’s tried to be true to herself no matter where her jobs with ESPN have taken her — from Burbank, Calif., to Denver to New York and now to Bristol.
For that, she gives all thanks to her parents. Her mother, Patrina, has a high-school education and worked for 31 years as a custodian at Delmae Elementary School. Her father, Roosevelt, who passed away two months ago, did not have a high-school education and ran a couple of barbecue restaurants to help provide for his family, which includes two children besides Rosalyn.
But Durant said she learned lessons about life growing up that no formally-educated people could have taught any better.
“I’ve learned so much from my mother,” Durant said. “And my dad was the wisest man I’ve ever known. And learning from experiences, he did that and was the master of it.”
Durant has served as the classic illustration of the small-town kid who made it big, and did it the old-school way — with some hard work and patience.
She worked a couple of retail jobs for a semester after graduating from Lamar in 1994 before heading off to South Carolina to major in broadcast journalism. For two years in college, she said, she came home on weekends and worked as a waitress at Red Lobster in Florence. Over holiday breaks, she served as a substitute teacher in Florence District 1.
Her first internship, she said, was at WOLO, Columbia’s ABC affiliate, and it was unpaid since she was really too young to be a paid intern. But, Durant said, she wanted to immerse herself in the atmosphere of a working broadcast facility so she could gain a better understanding of what went on there.
During her college years, she also did stints at WIS, Columbia’s NBC affiliate, Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta and then ESPN. There was some radio work mixed in there, as well, at WYNN-FM in Florence and at WUSC-FM, the campus radio station.
Durant said she enjoyed the on-air work, but was much more intrigued by the behind-the-scenes goings-on. Her stint at Turner was a business internship.
“I realized then I really enjoyed the things behind the scenes, the business side of it, the contract negotiations,” she said. “I loved sports, but I knew then I wanted to be on the business side and handle contracts.”
After her senior year internship at ESPN in the summer of 1998, Durant started her full-time professional career with the network in 1999 as a coordinator and rose rapidly through the ranks. Through 2005, she was an account executive on several levels before transitioning to a senior director in programming in February, 2006.
A little more than a year later, Durant was promoted to vice president of programming and acquisitions, where she managed ESPN’s multimedia NBA negotiations and extension through 2016, as well as the network’s partnerships with Major League Lacrosse, Major League Soccer, FIFA, UEFA, U.S. Soccer and Olympic sport leagues.
Durant was promoted to her current position in mid-April.
A fair characterization of her goals, Durant said with a chuckle, “is to not get yelled at and to make sure we get (ESPNU) where it needs to be.”
She loves the fact that she’s in charge of the network branch that caters to the college sports fan 24-7. Durant said she had an active extracurricular life in high school, but never played sports. But she did watch athletic events as often as possible and is a fan.
ESPN is no different, she said, than anywhere else when it comes to being a devoted college sports follower.
“One of the first things you get asked is what school you went to,” Durant said. She calls herself “a very proud Gamecock” and thinks Steve Spurrier will find a way to win football games at USC.
“There are always friendly bantering and wagers,” Durant said. “I enjoy the rivalries. I just need my Gamecocks to back it up.”
Durant has certainly backed up the faith her employers have put in her.
“I had a teacher at Lamar who used to say, ‘put pride in what your name goes beside,’” she said. “Anything you do, do it to the degree that you can be proud of. A lot of my success is just that. If you do that, you’re not going to do anything less than your best.”