Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance has everyone talking as the Puerto Rican native made history by being the first artist to perform at the Super Bowl entirely in Spanish. However, another incredible moment in history happened Sunday night that cannot be missed: NBC NFL sportscaster Maria Taylor became the first Black woman to host the Super Bowl pregame show! She is also the first woman to present the Lombardi Trophy after the game since Lesley Visser in 1992, according to NFL insider Ari Meirov.
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But who is Maria Taylor, and how has her career brought her to hosting the most-watched sports show in the United States? Well, we’re going to give you the rundown.
Started her career with ESPN
According to ESPN, Taylor, a former University of Georgia basketball and volleyball player, first became a sportscaster for the network in 2012 as a sideline reporter for ESPN2’s Saturday night primetime telecast.
She worked with the network for more than half a decade, reporting for the week’s biggest basketball and football games. She was also ESPN’s women’s basketball and volleyball game analyst, and in 2017, she took over as a reporter for “College GameDay” and “ABC Saturday Night Football,” per ESPN.
However, her career at ESPN came to a sad and abrupt end in 2021. She decided to leave the network because her former colleague, Fox Sports 1 analyst Rachel Nichols, was caught on a recording suggesting Taylor only got her hosting job because of her race, according to CNBC.
In a TikTok posted in 2024, Taylor told her followers that she knew it was time for her to leave the network, but it didn’t stop it from being an emotional decision that she cried over for two weeks.
“I was grieving the idea of what I had for my dream job, and my dream had changed. And so I was walking into realizing what the new life was going to look like, so I had to grieve the old, and that took about two weeks,” she said in the TikTok.
Taylor’s move To NBC
After leaving her post at ESPN, Taylor continued to shine as a reporter. In 2021, she covered women’s basketball at the Tokyo Olympics for NBC. Just a year after covering the Tokyo Olympics, Taylor officially moved to NBC, where she was named host of “Football Night in America,” the network’s flagship show.
Since switching networks, Taylor was named as a nominee on the TIME100 Next 2022 list of emerging leaders shaping the next generation of leadership. And she co-hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and the 2024 Paris Olympics.
To top it all off, she was named lead host of NBC Sports’ NBA studio show “Basketball Night in America” on Sundays in 2025 alongside co-hosts and former basketball stars Carmelo Anthony, Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady, per the NBA.
Super Bowl Coverage
Now, she has made history as the first Black woman to host NBC’s Super Bowl pregame show and present the Lombardi Trophy, which she said is a “tremendous privilege.”
“It’s a tremendous privilege to be the person presenting the Lombardi trophy. You know what I mean, like, how rare? I mean, working the Super Bowl in general, too, but things like that, those are pinch-me moments,” she told Sports Illustrated.
On her social media, Taylor has been celebrating her latest career achievement and showing love to her former high school classmate and the head coach of the winning team, the Seattle Seahawks, Mike Macdonald.
Folks in the comments were overjoyed for the sports commentator.
“Queen, you ate this evening!!!! You made herstory,” wrote one encouraging user.
Congratulations!! What a cool, unreal moment! I love this for you, Maria,” commented another.
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