Journalist Taylor Rooks Is Living A Glamorous Yet Simple Life. Take A Look

Although Taylor Rooks is renowned for her skill in interviews and her natural ability to persuade sportsmen to talk candidly about their lives outside of sports, who exactly is Taylor Rooks outside of sports?

The 31-year-old sportscaster has gained notoriety on her own and can be seen on Bleacher Report, “NBA on TNT”, and “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video.

She does, however, keep her identity as a friend, daughter, partner, and person quite secret.

The Post had breakfast with the Georgian resident of New York City, who is presently living there, and had a discussion with her on life, love, confidence, cocktails, friendships, and other topics at a charming location tucked away in Lower Manhattan’s Financial District.

Rooks wore leggings, a black beret cap, and a maroon sweater in a casual outfit.

Following the interview, she was going to a Pilates session at Solidcore, which provides a full-body, high-intensity, low-impact workout on a reformer similar to that used in Pilates.

“You have to try!” Excitement filled Rooks’ voice as she sipped her fruity mocktail that accompanied her lunch of lox, mashed avocado, and one poached egg.

One way Rooks switches off from her hectic schedule and her phone to concentrate on her health is through Pilates.

She was going to conduct a few errands after that and then take a trip to Baltimore, where the Ravens were playing the Bengals on “Thursday Night Football.”

That was one of her four or six weekly flights as usual.

“I was looking at my calendar for last month and I only slept in my bed for nine nights,” she quipped.

“Crazy, because even on top of [covering] the NFL, the NBA, I’ll do a bunch of marketing stuff. So, sometimes it doesn’t make sense to leave the game and come home just to leave the next day.”

Rooks expressed her excitement about being back in her hometown of New York this week for the Jets’ Thanksgiving Day game against the Dolphins at MetLife Stadium, which will be the first-ever NFL game to air exclusively on Prime Video.

Rooks leads a basic life while she isn’t working.

“I hang out with my pup,” On her Goldendoodle, she spoke. “I love my Bean. I hang out with my partner. I love to read… watch a movie. Honestly to me, the off-day means nothing. It means sitting on the couch. I always tell people, my couch is my favorite place. My couch means the absolute most to me because my home to me is so peaceful.”

Her connections are aided by such walls.

Rooks, who is 25 years old and currently works as a political fundraiser for local chapters in Georgia, takes great satisfaction in being her big sister and a devoted friend who is also brutally honest.

She boards the next aircraft to the city where her friends are partying if there is a birthday.

Though she doesn’t drink much, she does like red wine.

“I like Pinot Noir,” she said. “That’s mainly what I do.”

She tries to avoid drinking strong alcohol because it makes her feel drained, although she will drink Jack Daniel’s.

“My friends and I do a lot of eating and going to lounges. We also love to travel,” she continued, adding that after visiting Iceland earlier this year, Tokyo is on her bucket list for 2024.

Rooks continued by listing a handful of her favorite places in New York City, such as Fini Pizza, SAGA, Mezcali, and 4 Charles.

“Oh! I’m at Zero Bond like once a week for their crispy tuna rice,” the woman remarked.

An effective evening for Rooks involves engaging in conversation and sharing jokes with friends over food.

“My friend Samantha always says that ‘there’s a human being and human doing,’” she said. “What we do for work, that’s a human doing. But whenever somebody asks us about ourselves, we always talk about our work.

“So she always says, ‘Well, what is a human being?’ Like, what are you when you were are a being? And I honestly think about that all the time because I think it’s really true.”

Flying on an airplane is a way out.

“It’s the one place where no one can contact you. I always tell people for perspective, I hit Delta Diamond Medallion status in May this year,” she said and laughed.

“Planes are actually very peaceful for me. I get so much work done. I get a lot of reading done that I want to do. If there’s a show I want to watch, I can do that.

“But planes to me are like private time. I don’t text, it’s nothing like that. I only work or take time for myself… It’s silence, so I enjoy the rides to an extent.”

Her social schedule is very full.

She spent 48 hours on a plane last week attending a Formula 1 race sponsored by Jack Daniel’s.

Red carpets, film premieres, and A-list parties have become a constant part of this fast-paced life.

Rappers Drake and Jack Harlow, actresses La La Anthony and Anna Kendrick, WNBA great Sue Bird, and Giants running back Saquon Barkley are a few of her close pals.

During his appearance at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, Rooks went on stage with several celebrities including Harlow.

A campaign for Drake’s OVO clothing company included her as well, earlier in the year.

Every year during the Fourth of July, Rooks also makes an appearance at Michael Rubin’s star-studded White Party.

In June, she gave a private dinner in Cannes, France, for Academy Award–winning actress Halle Berry.

Rooks used the adjective “warm” to characterize herself more than once.

“I think that that permeates in my personal life and my professional life,” she said.

“I would say that I am a very bubbly, outgoing kind of person. I genuinely will talk to anyone. I love talking to people. People excite me. I like learning about others. I really like learning and reading about different perspectives. That’s also why I try to read books by people that are something that I’m not, because how will I know about that perspective if I don’t learn about it?

“I really like food. I really love animals. I would say I’m an incredibly trustworthy person when it comes to my friendships. I always show up. I won’t miss a birthday. I will fly in, fly out if I have to. I like making people feel good.”

Rooks made it apparent that she genuinely enjoys who she is.

“I’m not saying that in a weird way,” she said. “I feel like everyone should say this, I genuinely love myself, and I don’t think that we say that enough about ourselves. I really love myself.”

She possesses confidence.

At the age of 19, she achieved her first national TV smash and, humbly, knows that she is the real deal.

“I am so proud of my career,” a smiling Rooks said. “I’m so proud of everything I’ve accomplished. There’s always going to be people that are naysayers [and] people that doubt you.

“… I’m 31 now. This career has not been a fluke. This career has been incredibly thought out. It has been worked incredibly hard for.”

According to Rooks, her professional path has been “really intentional,” going from the Big Ten Network to SNY, and now Bleacher Report, TNT, and “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video.

“Knowing everything I have done and everything I am capable of even people that have whatever to say, it can’t mean anything because the proof is in the pudding,” she said.

“I genuinely believe this when I say I think women should say that they’re good at things more than they do because men say they’re good at things all the time.

“Sometimes you feel like you have to put a disclaimer on saying like, ‘Oh, no, I’m really good at the job.’ … because you think saying the truth about your work means that you’re being cocky or too into yourself.

“Meanwhile, Jimmy Butler can say ‘I’m the best basketball player in the world and LeBron James can call himself ‘king.’”

She stated that she hoped to impart a similar lesson to her younger sister.

“I think what I would tell her specifically is that it’s really important to be real with people, but specifically women,” Rooks said. “When I was growing up, I was always kind of told that, you know, eventually the world treats women better.

“I think that in some ways, that is true. But I think I would have really benefited from somebody saying, ‘This s–t is actually really hard.’

“I always say this, they might not ever treat you better, but you will get better. So I would tell my sister, like what you can control as yourself and for the rest of your life, the world will either tell you you’re too much, you’re not good enough, that you are less than, that you aren’t deserving of X, Y and Z, but that that just genuinely doesn’t matter. But I would never tell her that that stuff won’t happen because it will.

“I think it’s really more important to be armored and with the tools to not care when that stuff happens. And so I would just want her to hone in on like I am social and who I am, that who you say I am is legitimately inconsequential to me.”

In some ways, Rooks carried on her parents’ legacy.

Similar to her mother Stephanie, she majored in broadcast journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Thomas, her father, was one of the greatest running backs in Illinois football history and played football for the Illini.

Even while Rooks values her legacy greatly, she is forging her own route.

What will happen next?

Knowing that objectives might shift over time, Rooks now hopes to draw in a new audience to her meaningful conversational universe.

“If I’m walking somewhere, normally a man will see me and I’ll get stopped,” she said. “If I’m at a sporting event, I’ll get stopped all the time.

“It’s something that I’ve actually been thinking a lot about. I guess it’s just the nature of the business that men are the demographic. But I really, really, really, really want women to be more of a demographic of mine. That’s the group that I care the most about.

“But when you do sports, I feel like at this point, if you say my name in the sports world, someone would know who I am or they see my work. If you go into like a supermarket, they wouldn’t.

“I think that that is the part that’s important, how do you establish a crossover, right? How are you interviewing people that are of general interest to others as opposed to just people that are interested in sports?

“So with my interviews, what I try my best to do is make it about them as a human. I want to attack more of that non-sports fan.”

She’s already doing it in a lot of ways.

She can sense style in clothing.

She does not fit neatly within the “journalist” category.

Rooks is a legitimate social media influencer with over 305,000 followers on X and 622,000 followers on Instagram.

Her “get ready with me” TikTok videos, which she posted in front of “Thursday Night Football,” are a behind-the-scenes look into the hopes and desires of any beauty and fashion enthusiast.

However, a lot of thought goes into creating her looks each week, which is why she hires stylist Kenni and makeup artists Elle Valle and Haley Andrews.

“So my stylist and I, in the beginning of the season, we get an idea of what I want my looks to be for that year,” she said. “Then we’ll do a chart of what I’m wearing for each game, and bigger games, maybe we’ll try to get a little more fancy with the outfit.”

For the Black Friday game, she’s dressed in holiday-themed clothing.

Gina Torres’ character, Jessica Pearson on “Suits,” and Kerry Washington’s character, Olivia Pope on “Scandal,” were the two well-known television figures that Rooks looked to for inspiration when designing her TNF outfit.

“I really enjoy that uniformity of it,” she said. “I do believe that your body is the accessory. You don’t have to do too much. It just has to fit you right, and look clean and tailored.”

An amazing black, red, and white ensemble by Alice and Olivia, which included an Oliver Side Stripe High Waist Flare Trouser and a Barton cropped vegan leather varsity jacket, was one of her favorite and coziest gameday ensembles.

What are her essential makeup items for the big game? Rooks has a preference for Mac Fresh Moroccan Lipstick, One/Size by Patrick Starrr setting Spray, Nars concealer, and any type of stripped lashes.

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