Clemson, TCI Alumnus Loves her job at ESPN
By: Will Vandervort September 4, 2025

CLEMSON — Last week’s LSU game was a homecoming of sorts for Olivia Garrison.

A 2018 graduate of Clemson University, Garrison did not return to Clemson to go to a tailgate party or to cheer on her Tigers from the stands at Memorial Stadium. Instead, she was working.

That’s right, she was working. She was working the game.

Garrison works for ESPN, where she has worked for the last six years doing what she has always loved to do – working on social media.

It was the first time the Easley, S.C., native worked a Clemson Football Game since her senior year.

“I have been home and have come to games as a fan. I was home just last year,” she said. “But this is the first time I have been back to work a game in Clemson for ESPN. It was great being home and seeing everyone.”

Now in her fourth year working for ESPN’s Social Team, Garrison has traveled the country and covered sporting events such as the Super Bowl, the NFL and NBA Drafts and countless big-time games in college football.

She has worked games inside the Superdome in New Orleans, as well as in Madison Square Garden in New York.

Clemson graduate and TCI alumnus Olivia Garrison (middle) has worked for ESPN for six years and works on shows such as Get Up and First Take. (photos provided by Olivia Garrison)

Garrison works most days with ESPN personalities Mike Greenberg, Molly Qerim and Stephen A. Smith, and has met several celebrities like Magic Johnson and Rob Lowe to name a few.

“Our ESPN social team is a lot of different silos, so we have a college football team, NFL team, MMA team all kinds of different silos, but mine specifically is shows and talent,” Garrison said. “I moved over to this team, I think, two years ago. Before that, when I joined our social team, I was just working on daily content.

“Daily content would be just powering all of our ESPN branded accounts, so NFL, college football, etc. ESPN SportsCenter across Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook, covering all kinds of stories that are coming out every single day on the feeds, breaking news or it could be user generated content.”

What it boils down to is a lot of work, but Garrison would not have it any other way. That is what she is used to and signed up for, even when she was a student worker for The Clemson Insider back in her college days at Clemson.

“When I think about my college experience and how I got to where I am, I credit The Clemson Insider so much because, obviously, I had great mentorship,” said Garrison, who worked for TCI for three years. “I had great leadership. I worked under you Will, and Robert (MacRae) and you guys were just really great.

“You let me pretty much do whatever I had interest in. I got to write, I got to report, I got to do social. I expressed interest in social, and you were like ‘yeah just take the reins of the Instagram account and on Twitter’ and whatnot. So, I think just getting reps really early is so important and you guys let me do that really early on.”

While working for TCI, Garrison got the opportunity to cover football, men’s basketball, baseball and several Olympics sports as well. She wrote stories about student-athletes, did game stories for some of the sports, produced video content for the site, hosted studio shows and did all the social media for TCI.

Now in her fourth year working for ESPN’s Social Team, Clemson graduate Olivia Garrison has traveled the country and covered sporting events such as the Super Bowl, the NFL and NBA Drafts and countless big-time games in college football.

“That’s the whole point of internships is to learn and to figure out what you want to do,” she said. “To figure out what you’re good at and to figure out what you’re bad at and I think you guys gave me room to fail. I think that’s really important for a young person coming up in their career, to figure out what they want to do. Then having people who are great mentors that give you room for failure but also help you grow into getting to that place of success.

“There were multiple times where I didn’t do something right and you helped me fix it or you made my writing better or you had suggestions for me. So, I think that was just so beneficial for me now. I feel like I receive criticism really well, because you guys gave me that early on and so you get used to it because you’re going to have to. You’re going to receive criticism for the rest of your career. I think The Clemson insider definitely molded me into a professional and helped me figure out what I want to do by giving me just endless opportunities.”

Garrison was hungry, driven and always said yes to an assignment, even though she worked part-time for Brad Brownell and the men’s basketball team, was a tutor and interned at WSPA-TV 7 in Spartanburg.

After she graduated from Clemson, Garrison went on to work for the NCAA’s social media team before heading over to ESPN.

“Really, there was never a ‘no’ every time I came to you guys, and I said I want to try this or I want do this,” she said. “It was always ‘yeah, let’s figure it out together. I would love for you too.’ So, it was just instrumental and when I think of my career, that’s what propelled me to getting the NCAA job. Having that experience, because if I didn’t have the experience, I probably wouldn’t have gotten it and ESPN as well”