On a historic night in Santa Clara, two familiar faces from Centennial High School in Roswell, Georgia, shared the Super Bowl 60 stage - not as classmates reminiscing about the past, but as leaders who had climbed to the very top of their professions.
Maria Taylor, already a trailblazer in sports media, made history once again as the first Black woman to host both the official Super Bowl pregame show and the Lombardi Trophy presentation. Standing beside her was Mike Macdonald, the newly crowned Super Bowl-winning head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, after his team’s commanding 29-13 win.
It was a full-circle moment years in the making - two former student-athletes turned national figures, reunited under the brightest lights in football.
Back in the mid-2000s, Taylor and Macdonald were just two kids walking the halls of Centennial. She was dominating on the basketball court and volleyball net.
He was a gritty linebacker on the football field and a steady presence on the baseball diamond. Even then, those around them saw something more.
“In both of them, absolutely, their teachers saw potential,” said Mike Cloy, then the school’s athletic director. “Their coaches did, too. Everybody realized what great young people they were and the possibilities of greatness after high school.”
Macdonald wasn’t a five-star recruit. He didn’t play college football.
But what he lacked in size - Cloy described him as a “smallish, about 150-pound linebacker” - he made up for with leadership and football IQ. When injuries cut his senior season short, he didn’t check out.
He leaned in. He helped coach.
He installed defenses. He studied the game like a future coordinator - because that’s exactly what he was becoming.
That early obsession with scheme and structure became the foundation of a career that took him from the sidelines at Cedar Shoals High School to the University of Georgia, through the NFL ranks with the Ravens, to a stop at Michigan as defensive coordinator, and finally to the head coaching job in Seattle.
Now, at 38, Macdonald is the third-youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl - and the first to do it while calling defensive plays in an era where offensive masterminds usually steal the spotlight.
“He was a true leader,” Cloy said. “He loved the game of football. Even when he couldn’t play, he was still very much involved in being a positive influence for the rest of the team.”
Billy Nicholson, Macdonald’s baseball coach at Centennial, remembered that same spark: “He had this incredible, instinctive ability to lead even at such a young age. Heck, some of the team speeches he would give got us coaches wanting to go out and play the game.”
But if we’re talking about raw athletic dominance at Centennial, Taylor set the bar.
She was a three-time all-region volleyball player, the Fulton County Scholar Athlete of the Year in basketball, and a member of the 2004 USA Volleyball Junior National A2 team. Her ambition?
To become the first female president within 10 years. Her reality?
Becoming one of the most respected and visible voices in sports broadcasting.
Taylor took her talents to the University of Georgia, where she played both basketball and volleyball from 2005 to 2009, earning All-SEC honors every season in volleyball. While Macdonald was cutting his teeth as a student-coach at Cedar Shoals, Taylor was building a reputation as a force on the court and in the classroom.
She graduated with a degree in broadcast news, then rose quickly through the ranks at ESPN before moving to NBC. Her Super Bowl 60 assignment wasn’t just a personal milestone - it was a cultural one.
In a 2024 NBC segment, Taylor and Macdonald sat down to reflect on their shared roots and the journey that led them to this moment. It was lighthearted and nostalgic - Taylor teasing Macdonald about her “Most Athletic” yearbook superlative, while he laughed and admitted, “Not on here.”
Their paths may have diverged, but the drive was the same.
For Macdonald, the decision to pursue coaching over a career in finance wasn’t easy - but it was necessary.
“I have a passion here,” he said in that NBC interview. “Am I going to be kicking myself when I’m 40 if I didn’t give myself a shot?
… At some point, I just said, ‘You know what, I’m just going to go for it. I love this thing too much.’
That’s where it all started.”
That leap of faith led him to a graduate assistant role under Mark Richt at Georgia in 2010. From there, he joined John Harbaugh’s staff in Baltimore, worked his way up, then took a detour to Michigan to work with Jim Harbaugh in 2021. After another stint with the Ravens, he landed the Seahawks job in 2024.
Now, just one year into his head coaching career, Macdonald is a Super Bowl champion - and he received the trophy from someone who’s been part of his story from the beginning.
Two Centennial Knights. Two Georgia Bulldogs. Two careers built on preparation, leadership, and the kind of ambition that doesn’t fade with time.
On Sunday night, they stood on the sport’s biggest stage - not just as representatives of their teams and their alma mater, but as proof that greatness can grow anywhere, even in the hallways of a suburban high school in Georgia.