Mackenzie Brooks Abby Alonzo interview on her CBS Sports betting role

In the Mackenzie Brooks Abby Alonzo interview, Brooks said a College GameDay production job helped steer her toward sports betting, two modeling colleagues underpin her analysis at CBS Sports, and a losing pick does not erase the reasoning behind it. She also discussed teaching women about football and her goal of becoming a familiar voice on playoff projections.

What did Mackenzie Brooks mean by speaking for sports coders?

Mackenzie Brooks sees her on-air role as a bridge between statistical modelers and sports viewers. She said the people building projections often have valuable information but may not want to present it or explain it on air. Her strength, she told Abby Alonzo, is making their work relevant to an audience.

Brooks described herself as speaking for both the coders and the sports panel. The work she was referring to includes fantasy football projections and estimates of a team’s chance to make the playoffs. She did not present those numbers as her work alone: she said two colleagues who build the models are the brains behind her operation.

Brooks summed up what she contributes to that partnership:

My superpower is taking their stuff and making it relevant on air.

She said the three of them have worked together for two or three years. For Brooks, the arrangement gives her something more substantial to bring on air than an unsupported opinion, while giving the people behind the numbers a voice for their work.

How did College GameDay help Mackenzie Brooks become a CBS Sports betting analyst?

College GameDay gave Mackenzie Brooks an early opening behind the scenes at the University of Georgia. After working as a production runner and getting to know the show’s producers, she was encouraged to pursue sports betting because of her interest in numbers. She later sought an on-air betting role at CBS Sports rather than the research position the company raised with her.

Working on College GameDay at Georgia

Brooks’s junior and senior years at Georgia coincided with the school’s back-to-back national championships. She entered college unsure that she wanted to follow a conventional sports journalism path, which she associated with moving to a place such as North Dakota to work her way up as a sideline reporter. She wanted a credible degree while pursuing sports on the side.

Georgia’s sports media certificate program gave her that route without requiring her to major in journalism. Brooks said she entered the competitive program after a year of trying. A professor then helped her get a production-runner job when College GameDay came to town during her junior year. Her duties included getting coffee for Kirk Herbstreit, making Lee Corso’s tea and handling airport runs.

As the show returned to Georgia, Brooks spent more time around its producers. She said she went with the crew to Miami for the first college playoff, where they learned more about her background and suggested sports betting. She later spent a summer in Bristol with a stats and information group, working behind the scenes rather than on air.

Choosing the on-air role at CBS Sports

After Brooks had applied for a CBS Sports internship, its Research Analytics Department contacted her about a behind-the-scenes statistics role. She told them she wanted to be an on-air betting analyst instead. According to Brooks, the response was that CBS Sports needed that, too.

She pointed to Erin Dolan as a reason she believed that career could be possible. At CBS Sports, Brooks also met the colleagues whose coding work now supports her analysis. What began as an accidental meeting became an ongoing partnership built around their models and her ability to explain them.

How does Mackenzie Brooks handle criticism of her betting picks?

Mackenzie Brooks said she handles criticism by separating a bet’s outcome from the reasoning behind it and by remembering how briefly most online viewers dwell on a post. Her CBS Sports role has also strengthened her confidence. She does not claim every pick will win; she trusts the numerical work supporting what she says.

Brooks has been putting out betting content since her college years. That repetition helped her avoid tying her confidence entirely to a record, though she acknowledged that criticism can still get to her. She said having a defined role at CBS Sports made it easier to trust that she belonged in the conversation.

When a response on Twitter feels particularly intense, she reminds herself that her video may occupy only seconds of someone’s day. She compared that fleeting attention with the speed of tapping through Instagram stories. The thought helps her move past a comment rather than treat it as a lasting judgment of her work.

Why does Mackenzie Brooks teach women about football?

Mackenzie Brooks said helping women understand sports is one of the most rewarding parts of her content work, even though her CBS Sports role centers on betting and numbers. She has made TikToks explaining football, and responses from viewers—including mothers who better understand their sons’ high school games—have stayed with her.

A whiteboard lesson on football positions

Brooks recalled taking out a whiteboard to explain the positions on a football field. She said women recognizing her from that kind of lesson matters to her. So do comments from mothers who say they can finally follow what is happening in a high school football game.

Earning trust on NFL Today Plus

Another reward, she said, is earning the respect of people who have played the sport. Brooks does not suggest she is the best person in the room to discuss every football topic; she values having a specific area in which colleagues trust her judgment.

During tryouts for the Sunday CBS Sports show NFL Today Plus, she presented a segment about the Las Vegas Raiders’ spending on a center and why she thought it would not move the needle. Brooks recalled Russ responding that she should be a general manager. She cited moments like that as signs that colleagues recognize what her analysis adds.

What advice did Mackenzie Brooks give about building sports content?

Mackenzie Brooks’s advice to aspiring sports creators was to have something to say for themselves, rather than wait for a large following. She pointed to an early TikTok and Instagram betting account that never reached 1,000 followers. The account still let her demonstrate how she presented picks and explained her ideas.

Brooks described a simple setup: she put her phone in place, recorded her NBA bets for the night and added text within the app. She said the account may already have had a few hundred followers when she took it over from a friend, but its eventual size was not the point.

Her path also involved work that was not on camera, from College GameDay errands to the stats group in Bristol. Together, those experiences gave her both production exposure and a closer look at the numbers she wanted to discuss on air.

What does Mackenzie Brooks want to cover next at CBS Sports?

Mackenzie Brooks wants viewers to associate her with college football playoff and March Madness projections. She said bracketology is becoming a bigger part of her CBS Sports work and hopes to build a consistent expectation that she can identify playoff contenders and bubble teams. She also shared a Houston spread pick and her view of the Packers.

Playoff and March Madness projections

Brooks described the direction she wants her career to take: when someone sees her online, she wants them to expect an explanation of which teams could make the college football playoff or sit on the March Madness bubble. As she does more national work, she hopes to become a familiar numbers-focused presence for football and basketball projections, invoking Steve Kornacki as a comparison for that kind of role.

Houston, Carolina and Green Bay

Asked about a football pick, Brooks said she liked Houston to cover the spread against the Panthers because she expected Carolina to regress. She also said the Packers looked strong and expected them to improve. Those were her views at the time of the conversation, not reported game results.