Sportscaster Maria Taylor’s list of accomplishments is long. Just this year, she hosted the Super Bowl LX pregame show, jetted to Milan soon after to cohost late-night Olympics coverage, and released the docuseries Field Generals: History of the Black Quarterback, her first as an executive producer. But the project that has been the most rewarding for her recently is becoming a mom to her 2-year-old son, Roman.
“That switched something in me where I felt like I don’t have to apologize for anything. I don’t feel like I have to ask for permission,” Maria says. “I deserve to be in the rooms. I’ve worked hard enough, and now I have to stand up and be the fullest version of myself so that my son can be a proud son.”
Maria’s motherhood journey—a winding road that’s included three fibroid surgeries and in-vitro fertilization—has run parallel to her career growth. Her first embryo transfer failed the day before the NFL Hall of Fame Game in 2022; her IVF protocols for her next transfer changed right before she became the first full-time female host of Football Night in America. “I’m at the IVF doctor in the morning, then going to do the show in the afternoon,” she says. It put things into perspective for her. “It made me take a little bit of pressure off myself to just be like, ‘You know what? You have a lot going on. Why don’t you find grace instead of critiquing every single thing you do? I need you to just exist at work so that we can really work hard over here in life.’ ”
Lately, Roman has been part of her biggest moments. Sometimes that has meant, say, having contractions at the Football Night in America desk or pumping milk on a boat at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris right before interviewing flag bearers LeBron James and Coco Gauff. “I truly believe there’s nothing I can’t do,” she says.
Maria, who comes from a family of basketball players, says seeing Team USA’s women win gold in her hometown of Atlanta in 1996 made her want to be an Olympian herself. She played both basketball and volleyball, becoming a dual-sport athlete at the University of Georgia. “I don’t think I ever understood life without sport in some way from the very, very beginning,” she says.
She also majored in broadcasting and faced a difficult decision at the end of college: play volleyball overseas or begin a hosting career. She chose the latter, first working for her alma mater as a production assistant. The identity shift of post-athlete life was challenging, so she threw herself into work—going to every practice and reporting as much as she could just to be around sports. As the interviews got bigger, so did her love for the craft. The first time she interviewed legendary University of Tennessee basketball coach Pat Summitt, she knew she’d found her calling.
But Maria’s real passion lies in sharing stories of “firsts” and the trailblazers in sports, a theme she relates to. “I’ve been the only one in the room or the first one, and I recognize the weight that comes with it and I recognize the responsibility,” she says. Earlier this year, she became the first Black woman to present the Vince Lombardi Trophy at the Super Bowl. “I don’t think it’s anything to shy away from or downplay, because it’s real.” When working on her docuseries, she was able to show James “Shack” Harris, the first Black quarterback to play in the Pro Bowl, a video of people thanking him for his impact. “He deserves to know that he paved the way and that what he did was important,” she says.
Continuing to tell untold stories and giving the right people in sports their flowers is a constant career goal for her. “That’s why you need different people behind the camera and telling the stories and deciding the stories to tell,” she says. “If I have the opportunity to do it—and every time, I do it—that’s one of the purposes I feel like I really need to serve.”
She also feels a responsibility to create more visibility for women in sports, and that starts with giving them airtime. “If we have done our job, then you can come to the water cooler and have a conversation about these courageous, strong moms, women who are going after their dreams,” she says. “The product is good because the women are great—you just haven’t seen them. So here you go.”
For Maria, changing the game means writing her own rules now—in sports, in motherhood, in life. “Everything’s going to evolve, everything’s going to adapt, everything does have to change,” she says. “It’s the people who are willing to walk into a room, realize it, and then go through the steps to create it that will make the difference.”
Maria’s Daily Rituals
1. Touch Grass
“That just means being grounded—whatever the thing is that grounds you. For me, I need to work out in the morning, so I need to go touch the treadmill and be in my body. I need to feel my heart rate go up.”
2. Plan, Period
“For me, it has to be handwritten. Some people can plan in their phone. But I’m like, ‘The nanny comes at 10. Roman gets up at 9. I plan on working out at this time,’ and kind of go through the day like that.”
3. Lead with Trust
“When the day starts to get out of hand, I go back to, like, ‘I trust that this is happening the way it’s supposed to happen, and I’m grateful that it’s about to happen the way it’s supposed to happen.’”
Makeup and hair: Pierre Varnado
Amanda Lucci is the director of special projects at Women’s Health, where she works on multi-platform brand initiatives and social media strategy. She also leads the sports and athletes vertical, traveling to cover the Paris Olympics, Women’s World Cup, WNBA Finals, and NCAA Final Four for WH. She has nearly 15 years of experience writing, editing, and managing social media for national and international publications and is also a NASM-certified personal trainer. A proud native of Pittsburgh, PA, she is a graduate of Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Follow her on Instagram @alucci.
