Joy Taylor has quickly seen her star rise in sports media circles, but the FS1 host knows she isn’t an overnight success. It took years to get where she wanted to be.
During an appearance on the I Am Athlete podcast, Taylor admitted she has faced many challenges as a Black woman in sports on her way to stardom.
“I’ve been literally told how hard it is to do a daily show, while I was working on a daily show,” said Taylor. “You mean the show I currently work on? I don’t know how hard it is to do that? The same meeting I’m in every day? The same wake up call? Same time? How would I not know how hard it is to do the show I work on? You have to constantly reaffirm that you are good enough, that you belong there, and always prove it.”
Taylor admitted that she always believed she had to do twice the work for half of the opportunity, but that mentality made her better.
“That’s why I’m excellent. I had to be. I couldn’t be average, I couldn’t be ok, I couldn’t be late, I couldn’t complain, I couldn’t say no,” Taylor said. “Now I do, but you have to do that because you can’t give people the opportunity to doubt you. So that is what the sacrifice is. There’s a lot of pride sacrificed, you gotta eat a lot of shit, you gotta listen to a lot of jokes, you gotta ignore little comments, little microaggressions.”
Taylor is currently the host of Speak on FS1 after serving as co-host of The Herd with Colin Cowherd for more than three years.
