Tori McElhaney’s first time playing football was also her last.
While trying to run down the ball carrier in an all-girls flag football game in middle school, another player tripped her. McElhaney fell on her left hand, breaking her middle finger.
It’s a story that her football-loving family (including an uncle who was the first-ever Hairy Dawg) likes to bring up any time she’s analyzing plays made by Atlanta Falcons players.
“That was my villain origin story where I wanted to make football my career because I got it taken away from me before I ever even had the opportunity to truly play,” McElhaney ABJ ’18 jokes. “My dad has always been a football coach, and we truly did bleed red and black as a family, so I always knew I wanted to go to the University of Georgia.”
As the senior reporter for the Falcons, the Grady College alumna is constantly writing, reporting, and conducting interviews with the team.
Whether it’s a coaching change, a player profile, or an injury update, if Falcons fans hear breaking news, it’s usually because McElhaney reported it first. McElhaney also reports live during games. During the off-season, she constantly works to promote the players and their stories.
“Now, here I am at 29, a well-rounded journalist able to do a little bit of everything because that was what Grady allowed me to do as a student.”
TORI MCELHANEY, SENIOR REPORTER FOR THE ATLANTA FALCONS
She puts her expertise to use as co-host of the Falcons-centric show Rise Up Tonight on Fox 5 Atlanta. While McElhaney got her start as a print reporter, she’s such a natural broadcaster that it’s surprising that she used to avoid on-camera reporting.
McElhaney acquired the rapid-paced, think-on-your-feet skills to adapt and handle sports journalism (especially broadcast) at UGA. An entire semester of being the go-to live reporter for the student-run news station, Grady Newsource, didn’t hurt either.
“That was invaluable to me, looking back, because now I’m on camera every week,” she says. “At that time, I hated it because it didn’t feel like me. But life can have a different plan for you. Now, here I am at 29, a well-rounded journalist able to do a little bit of everything because that was what Grady allowed me to do as a student.”
McElhaney’s sports reporting also developed while she was still at UGA. From covering every Bulldog sport for The Red & Black to reporting Georgia football news for Dawg Nation starting in her junior year, she earned a spot writing with The Athletic, now owned by The New York Times, immediately after graduating.
More than three years in that job brought McElhaney to her role with the Falcons, where her reporting earned her the National Sports Media Association Georgia Sportswriter of the Year honor in 2024. McElhaney was the first woman from the state of Georgia to earn the accolade for the award that has been around since 1951.
She also won an Emmy for Best Sports Documentary this past summer.
But McElhaney doesn’t linger on these accomplishments too long. After all, it is football season.
“I feel like the Falcons went out on a limb to hire a true, capital-J Journalist to do internal reporting for the team,” she says. “I take that as a challenge to change the way that people look at in-house media. I love my team, and I love what I do.”