Nate Expectations

As a former football star, an analyst on The NFL Today, and a new co-host of CBS’s morning show, Emmy Award–winning Nate Burleson shows his versatility every time he’s on camera. And he’s just getting started.

- Alex Bhattacharji

There are millions of football fans who love to spend their Sundays relaxing on the couch watching Nate Burleson on The NFL Today. But Burleson himself is not exactly a passive observer when his own TV is on. Instead, at home in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, the 40-year-old Emmy Award-winning broadcaster and new co-host of CBS’s morning show treats TV viewing as an exercise in the study of craft. “I either watch on mute,” he says, “so I can see how people interact with each other, what they are doing with their eyes and hands, or I turn the volume all the way up and I close my eyes and see if I can understand what they are describing.”

Other times, he will pace around the room mumbling to himself, repeating lines and reading and writing, then rewriting, scripts. “People think you just wake up and start talking on air,” he says. “No, no, no, no! Talking on TV begins two steps away from the end zone. The rest of the work is being Barry Sanders zigzagging back and forth like crazy in the backfield.”