Sports Journalist Creates Viral ‘Hoops for Hotties’ Series, Which Shaq Calls ‘Funny as Hell’ (Exclusive)

Mariah Rose had been sharing sports content on TikTok for a while, but something still didn’t feel right. Yes, she was proud — and even excited — about the platform she had built of over 100,000 followers. But every time she scrolled through the comments on her videos, mostly from men, she felt “miserable.”

Growing up in Atlanta, Rose had always been immersed in sports, thanks to her mom. In fact, the very first activity she and her brother ever did was sports. Her mom had a saying: “An idle mind is the devil’s playground,” and she lived by it.

Rose eventually chose to pursue volleyball but continued to fall in love with other sports, especially basketball. To this day, she’s a massive Stephen Curry fan. Though she doesn’t recall ever being formally taught the game, she picked up a lot just by watching her brother play.

“I’d be in the backseat of our car, and my mom would say to my brother, ‘Don’t get in this car unless you got 20 points,’ ” she recalls.

“I’d hear her either complain or cheer, talk s— about the players — who shouldn’t be playing, who should be and why they lost,” she adds. “That’s kind of how I figured out what was going on, because I always had to be there.”

When Rose went to college to study sports broadcasting at the University of Georgia, she naturally found herself breaking down sports for the women around her — whether it was her mom, her friends or even strangers at a sports bar. At the time, she didn’t think much about what it meant to be a woman in sports.

But recently — frustrated by her male-dominated audience and inspired by all those casual conversations — Rose, now 25, made a TikTok called Hoops for Hotties. To her surprise, it went viral.

“I thought it was a fun little series name, and I just stuck with it,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively over Zoom. “I have no idea why — it just popped into my head. It was just one video explaining basketball basics. And I was like, okay, the audience is there. Women do care. They are interested.”

“My comments were more fun, and the audience I was attracting was more fun,” she adds. “So I became obsessed with it. I started explaining everything.”

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When it comes to making sports relatable for people who might not typically watch, Rose says the creative comparisons come naturally. She often draws on her love of pop culture, including The Real Housewives and Love Island, to create fun metaphors.

For example, one video she posted compared Destiny’s Child to the different football positions. “no one better to explain the positions better than Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child! 🏈👑🐝,” she captioned the video.

“Omg football makes sense now 😩😩😩,” one person commented on the video.

“so what i’m getting from this is that i need more ppl to explain sports in terms of beyonce for it to make sense to me 😭,” someone else wrote.

Another user replied, “girl guidebook to football! this made it click so much faster.”

One of her biggest challenges, she says, is dealing with moments when she feels like there’s nothing to talk about — though, in truth, there always is. “You just have to find it.”

“Another big challenge is learning to balance the fact that I could run into these players in real life,” she continues. “At the end of the day, my duty is to my audience — not to the players or the media. I’m not trying to get them to like me.”

“I’ll run into situations, like Joy Taylor’s thing with Fox News — or whatever that was — and the audience is begging me to talk about it. Joy follows me, and I have respect for her. So it’s about finding that balance. I have a duty to be honest and say what I really think, because at the end of the day, my employer is me — and my audience.”

As Rose has continued posting Hoops for Hotties content, her following has grown to over 669,000 on TikTok and 37,000 on Instagram. She’s also created dedicated pages to her Hoops for Hotties content on TikTok and Instagram.

As a result, she’s turned social media into her full-time job. She logs on at 9 a.m., makes content, takes calls, does interviews and connects with her followers. One of her most memorable moments? Shaquille O’Neal once reached out to her directly. “Shaq messaged me saying, ‘You funny as hell,’ ” she says with a laugh.

“I get messages all the time like, ‘You made me want to work in sports,’ or, ‘I was always told not to do this,’ ” she says. “That last one is a big one. I was always told not to major in journalism because I wouldn’t make any money. But at the end of the day, it was never about the money for me — it was about the fact that I’d be miserable doing anything else.”

“Women tell me I inspired them to get into sports, or they’ll say, ‘You taught me X, Y, Z about the NFL, and I was able to keep up with the men in my meeting,’” she adds. “And that means a lot. It makes me feel like I’m helping people feel more confident.”

When it comes to the future, Rose has big dreams for her platform. She hopes to expand into longer-form content on YouTube and launch an audio version of her content as well.

“I just want to keep climbing,” she says. “I want every woman who’s interested in sports to have a place they can go to listen and feel represented — to have a sports outlet, because there are a lot of us. That’s my main goal right now.”

She also wishes more people — sports fans and non-fans alike — understood that it’s perfectly okay to be a casual fan. In fact, she says, most people are.

“Don’t feel like you have to know everything, or every player, or feel stupid for asking a question,” she says. “The guy making you feel dumb about sports? He doesn’t know everything either. So it’s okay to be casual, to dip your toe in when you want, and step back when you don’t. It’s supposed to be fun.”