FSU believes it has the right guy to begin work on next Seminoles’ dynasty

It’s a summer evening and Willie Taggart finds himself inside a performing arts theater in Sarasota, Florida.

He’s there to fire up the sold-out crowd as Florida State’s newest head coach. Hired last December, Taggart quickly organized his staff and helped save FSU’s recruiting class, which previously plummeted to No. 64 in the recruiting rankings, by getting the Seminoles to No. 11 in the 247 Sports composite class rankings.

There’s a buzz surrounding Taggart. His overall head coaching record doesn’t do his magic any justice.

He turned around his alma mater Western Kentucky, USF and Oregon.

The decision to leave Oregon after one season didn’t sit well with Duck fans, but there was an important reason for Taggart to make such a bold move to Tallahassee: it’s his dream school.

Long before Taggart got into coaching, he dreamed to play at FSU and rooted for the Seminoles when growing up in Palmetto, Florida.

Every trip back to the 941 area, Taggart makes a point to drive past the apartment complex he was raised in, though there wasn’t time on this particular summer evening’s chat with booster club members and fans about the upcoming FSU season.

“We’re going to make them proud,” Taggart said of his message to the FSU fans in the 941. “We understand that this is their football team. We want them to notice their team and be passionate about their team. We understand the standards, and that’s what we’re going to try to do and that’s uphold the standards.”

Childhood dreams

Taggart said him and his friends used to take a white T-shirt and a sharpie, and jot their favorite FSU players of the day on the back of it as they played pickup games.

“It was pretty cool, because (Florida State) won a lot,” Taggart said. “Florida State was winning week in and week out.Coach (Bobby) Bowden had the dynasty going. You grew to love Florida State and what they’re all about. You enjoyed the way they played, the way they won, how much fun the guys were having playing the game.”

Taggart didn’t have one favorite FSU childhood moment, but he can roll through the list of names from Deion Sanders to Charlie Ward and everyone else that starred for the Noles.

When it came to playing football, Taggart took his game to Manatee High in nearby Bradenton, Florida.

The starting job at the time, though, belonged to a future college football Hall of Famer: “Touchdown” Tommie Frazier.

“You were the quarterback at Manatee High School, you won ballgames,” Taggart said. “So growing up, that’s something I wanted to be a part of.”

Taggart said he remembers quarterback coach Frank Turner telling him to try being better than the best player to ever play your position at the school.

That meant following Frazier.

“That was pretty tough to do,” Taggart said.“I’m not the guy to say whether I was better or not. I always say whenever you ask who were the better quarterbacks to have played at Manatee High School,pretty sure my name will come up in there somewhere. So that’s pretty good company to be in.”

Finding a coaching path

Taggart left Manatee High for Western Kentucky, where he starred as a dual-threat quarterback and developed a tight bond with the Harbaugh family. The patriarch, Jack, was WKU’s coach at the time and his two sons — Jim and John — later would become NFL coaches. Jim played in the NFL for the Chicago Bears when he was recruiting for his father and met Taggart in the cafeteria at Manatee High.

“I thought I was the big man on campus that day,” Taggart said. “I had Jim Harbaugh coming in to see me. We went to the fieldhouse, watched some film and talked. By the time we came out, there were5,200 people out there with Michigan hat and Chicago Bears jerseys and hats wanting autographs. I’m standing next to Jim going, ‘Yeah!’ ... That was a point in my life where my life changed.”

Added Harbaugh: “I was the first person to contact him.... I called him up, made an appointment to see him. It was in the cafeteria.We had a hot dog and that was the beginning of a long and trusted friendship.”

Jim later hired Taggart on his staff at Stanford, before Taggart became a head coach at WKU and Jim left for the San Francisco 49ers

Jim is now at the University of Michigan.

Dreams fulfilled

After turning the Hilltoppers around, Taggart left his alma mater for Tampa and the University of South Florida. His old coach, Joe Kinnan, was brought in as an offensive consultant in 2015 to help Taggart revamp the Bulls’ offense. The Gulf Coast Offense, a spread system, excelled with quarterback Quinton Flowers at the helm.

But Taggart’s stay in Tampa was over when a Power 5 program,Oregon, offered him its head coaching position in December 2016. Taggart was there for one season, before Florida State had its second opening in more than40 years.

The chance to go to his dream school was too good to pass up, even if Oregon fans were angered in the moment.

There are expected growing pains for FSU in the first season under Taggart, but players have expressed how different the culture in Tallahasseeis with Taggart and longtime assistant Ray Woodie, who is from Palmetto,Florida like Taggart, in charge of the Seminoles.

“From the start, (Taggart) has shown his personality,his demeanor, his confidence. He’s just got this certain swag,” junior defensive end Brian Burns told the Tallahassee Democrat at July’s ACC Media Days. “Coach Taggart has brought a new wave, a new culture to FloridaState.”

Taggart’s embraced the past, bringing Bobby Bowden and past stars such as Peter Warrick, who is from Bradenton, Florida.

Linking the tradition to today’s players was one goal as is his Taggart-isms, such as the #DoSomething social media trend he created aswell as his ending phrase to any press conference: “Have a great day if you want to.”

For FSU fans, there’s a popular opinion they have their right guy to begin the next Seminoles dynasty.

It may just take a little time.

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This story was originally published August 29, 2018 at 3:56 PM.