The postgame interview is unlikely to be the most talked-about moment from Monday night’s national title game — at least Maria Taylor hopes it is that way.
It was the case, however, when Alabama opened its season with a 51-14 beatdown of Louisville and Taylor asked Nick Saban about the quarterback controversy surrounding the nation’s top college football program. Saban exploded, demanding that the questions about the battle between Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen Hurts cease.
“You don’t want to be defined by these moments that are so few and far between when I am working 16 games a year, doing college basketball and ‘Get Up!’ ” said Taylor, who will be covering the Crimson Tide on Monday, while Tom Rinaldi is monitoring Clemson.
“And then people only want to talk about you because a coach yelled at you. I guess that’s the name of the game. No one cares about anything until it’s something that goes viral. It’s most certainly frustrating. But as a reporter, that’s how you know you’re doing a good job — when no one’s talking about you. And something has gone wrong if they are.”
The situation blew over with Saban apologizing to Taylor publicly and privately and the two even playing basketball together in a recent ESPN video.
“That’s not the one thing they’re looking forward to,” Taylor said of the sideline interview. “We are in the line of fire at all times and I just got caught in the fire in that scenario. You’re always expecting something like that to happen, but to actually have it happen, it’s all just about how you are going to react in the situation.
Maria Taylor on the set of “Get Up!”Allen Kee / ESPN Images“So in my mind I was like, ‘OK, this isn’t him at all, we’re just going to move on.’ It worked out OK. I had a situation with Coach Cal [John Calipari] where he grabbed my arm during the Champions Classic and everyone was like, ‘Oh, if it was a man he’d have never done that’ and it was like they tried to drag me into being a victim and I had to say, ‘I wasn’t the victim, it’s fine.’ ”
A year ago, Taylor went from the SEC Network to ESPN’s top college football team with Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit when Sam Ponder was made the host of “Sunday NFL Countdown.” Taylor signed a multi-year extension with ESPN in August and is now a regular co-host on “Get Up!.” It is not the career she thought she would get into while she played hoops and volleyball at Georgia. On a whim, she tagged along to an Intro to Journalism class with volleyball teammate Anjelica Partridge and her interest grew from there.
She said her biggest challenge as a minority and a woman is fighting the feeling you don’t belong when you are different than nearly of all your colleagues.
“In a lot of ways that can make you feel like an outsider, but you have to battle that demon in your head,” Taylor, 31, said. “That’s me telling myself I don’t belong. So, I think that’s one of the biggest hurdles I’ve had to overcome is constantly telling myself that I belong whether it’s in meetings, or on a field. It creates self-doubt when you don’t see anyone else like you around.”
