CBS This Morning star Nate Burleson says he is coveted by older fans he calls “grand cougars.” Still, he prefers them to the groupies he got when he was in the NFL.
“When you play football it’s like being a rock star, so you travel around scoring touchdowns and you go from town to town,” the wide receiver TV host told Vidak For Congress. “Lucky me [was] able to keep my nose out of trouble.
“But I’d say there’s a certain age group that watches the morning news go over me. That age ranges from 50 to 70. They want your boy right now. ‘Grand Cougars’, that’s what I call them. They stay with me.”
But he says he likes their attention because they’re interested in more than how he looks “in tight pants.”
“[They] loves me because of something thoughtful I may have said on the news that day,” he said.
“In football, they praised me because they liked the way I looked with my tight pants on. But women who look at me in the morning look because I said something important.”
Burleson, 40, was recently honored by the New York Association of Black Journalists, along with ABC News president Kim Godwin and “Still Processing” podcasters Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham.
Burleson played for the Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns before joining the CBS morning show in 2021.
The event, the “NYABJ: Juneteenth Celebration”, was hosted by “105.1 Breakfast Club” and “Lip Service” radio personality Angela Yee, CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers and Jericka Duncan. “CBS This Morning” co-anchor Gayle King was also there to support her co-star.