Taylor McGregor ‘never had to Google so much in my life’ for FSU-SMU power outage reporting

ESPN sideline reporter Taylor McGregor put on a masterclass in real-time reporting Monday night when the game between Florida State and SMU was delayed by a power outage.

Listening to McGregor explain everything that had happened at and around Doak Campbell Stadium after it plunged into darkness, delaying the start of the game by over an hour, you’d have thought she was an expert in electrical grids and power outages.

Dave Pasch, Taylor McGregor attempt to explain the inexplicable as a power outage delays Florida State-SMU:

“Until they can get the lights back on, the power back on, they will not be playing football.” pic.twitter.com/ajAXRVMt3d

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 8, 2026

Turns out, she was working Google as much as she could find out in between TV spots.

McGregor appeared on The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday to talk about the wild events of the previous evening. While the Mustangs kicked a field goal in the waning moments to finally defeat the Seminoles late into the evening, the ESPN reporter had been working hard all night long to make sure she was providing as much correct information as possible.

As she and McAfee tried to make sense of what happened that sent the stadium into darkness and forced referees to manually track time until it was restored, McGregor admitted she was doing research on the ground as everything developed.

“I’ve never had to google so much in my life 😂😂

I did a lot more research on power than I did on football last night” ~ @Taylor_McGregor #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/JBOeSCi3cC

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) September 8, 2026

“I’ve never had to Google so much in my life,” McGregor told McAfee. “What is a transformer? What’s a generator? Just making sure my lingo and verbiage was up and I’m not saying the wrong things because a power line and everything that they were communicating to me, I’m like, ‘okay, how can we make this as clear to the audience as possible?’

“So I did a lot more research on power in Tallahassee than I probably did on football last night. And I never would have predicted that.”

As McAfee noted, that’s information that McGregor will now have stored away in her brain forever. Because you never know when that might come in handy again. College football is weird like that.