Interesting article about Taggart from Bowling Green News

[redfisher78]

Last line says a lot!

http://www.bgdailynews.com/sports/more-to-taggart-s-move-than-money/article_99d60fca-42e9-11e2-a385-001a4bcf887a.html

[Ruger7mmmag]

Great read.

[GaUSFBull]

Fantastic piece. Hope we prove this line correct though next year:

He didn’t want to come to work Nov. 24 and see an empty stadium. He did, and he and the seniors who helped turned the program around deserved more. He won’t have to worry about these things in Tampa.

[TyBull]

WOW.........

I originally wanted Petrino.

But, I feel better now.

I think we got the right guy.

Hope that I / we / USF are correct

Ty

[FazaUSF]

How are you reading it? Won't let me do it without logging in/paying. Maybe it's just cuz I am on mobile?

[Triple B]

Fantastic piece. Hope we prove this line correct though next year:

He didn’t want to come to work Nov. 24 and see an empty stadium. He did, and he and the seniors who helped turned the program around deserved more. He won’t have to worry about these things in Tampa.

The author is obviously not real familiar with the fans down here. WKU had lost 4 of its' last 5, all conference games, going into that game .... the crowd here would have been just as disappointing, relatively speaking.

One thing that did bother me in the article:

Taggart is a coach who reads everything. Everything. From blogs to tweets to articles to Facebook posts. He is a mad scientist, constantly concerned with the perception of his team and his own coaching abilities.

That's going to be worse here than he ever had it in Bowling Green and I hope he doesn't continue this time waster down here .... Focus on the football.

[charsibb]

I like these lines. What a change from BOTH previous coaches!

When I sat down with Bobby Rainey in November of 2011, the running back told me this: “He’s so smart. I’m not lying. He knows his stuff about football. He knows his offense inside-out.â€

Jakes said of Taggart: “He knows some football. There’s a lot of history that goes with it. His offense takes time. You got to be willing to learn because there’s so many different things you can do and variations of things you can do to make one play look like another play.â€

[charsibb]

How are you reading it? Won't let me do it without logging in/paying. Maybe it's just cuz I am on mobile?

It's not premium content, so here ya go

INSIDE THE PROGRAM by Chad Bishop More to Taggart’s move than money

Posted: Monday, December 10, 2012 10:49 am

By CHAD BISHOP The Daily News cbishop@bgdailynews.com/783-3241 | 1 comment

It was not about the money. You may want to believe it was, but that’s not the whole story.

Willie Taggart left his alma mater, Western Kentucky, on Friday to start a new chapter at the University of South Florida. He’ll be paid more than double what he made in Bowling Green and it’s easy on the surface to say the 36-year-old did what we all would do – leave just for more money.

But I know better.

If community gossip has any speck of truth to it, boosters and friends of the program could have made Taggart the highest-paid coach in the Sun Belt Conference. He would have made roughly the same amount of money he’ll be making at his new gig.

He knew all this.

I began covering Taggart and WKU in the fall of 2011, right as the Hilltoppers started the season 0-3 and got manhandled at home by Indiana State.

I’ll always remember sitting in then-athletic director Ross Bjork’s office, along with now-AD Todd Stewart, discussing the state of Western Kentucky football.

Some were questioning whether Taggart, 15 games into his college head coaching career, was the right man for the job. Some even questioned whether moving the program to the FBS level had been the right move.

Ever since that weekend, WKU football has been a different entity.

I later heard the story – more than once – that Taggart never left his office the night after the ISU loss. He stayed, alone, watching game film to try and figure out what was wrong.

He must’ve found something. We know the rest.

Taggart went 14-7 from there and Western Kentucky was no longer a doormat, but rather knocking at the door of something great.

In the offseason that followed, Taggart was more than amicable, despite his team (7-5) being snubbed in the bowl selection process.

We spoke once during one of his many day camps in the spring and talked about how to get that stadium of his filled up. He had hoped beating Kentucky would do the trick.

Over the summer in New Orleans, we spoke about his fondest memories of playing at WKU, how he handled player discipline and what he envisioned for the 2012 season.

In both meetings, I remember he had that grin on his face that something larger was looming.

These past few months, however, were different.

Taggart would say repeatedly during the preseason that “7-5 wasn’t good enough.†The athletic department even created a marketing campaign around the decree. From the outset of 2012 the players knew they had to win at least eight games.

Taggart explained how his team learned the hard way in 2011 that one loss in league play would be one loss too many in 2012. You could imagine the team’s mindset then after a heartbreaking 43-42 conference defeat in October and staring at five Sun Belt games left on the docket.

The relationship between Taggart and the media also became strained. Once upon a time we convened in his office on Thursdays for small talk and to discuss the upcoming game. That ceased after Week One of 2012.

The pressures of the Alabama and Kentucky weeks also seemed to take their toll. He called the Crimson Tide an NFL team. He said WKU students who wear Kentucky apparel on campus likely do so because they were never accepted to the Lexington school.

The national media latched on to that sort of nonsense. We, the local hacks, seemed to get the brunt of the fallout.

Taggart is a coach who reads everything. Everything. From blogs to tweets to articles to Facebook posts. He is a mad scientist, constantly concerned with the perception of his team and his own coaching abilities.

When I suggested, via Twitter, during the course of a 14-6 win this season at Florida International that he was electing to go for fourth-down conversions instead of kicking field goals because he lacked confidence in his walk-on freshman kicker, he fired back.

“I have all the confidence in the world of all our players. Don’t speak for me,†he responded to me publicly with a tweet of his own not long after the game. I had forgotten I had even written the original post.

Taggart also appeared to be more and more annoyed as the season went on by questions concerning extracurriculars. He wanted to talk about football and his talented players – not about the size of the crowds at Houchens-Smith Stadium, future season ticket sales, bowl prospects or bowl snubs.

He didn’t want to drive to his office and look up at the billboards near Houchens-Smith Stadium advertising WKU basketball, billboards that once supported his team – but were changed before the start of his team’s season.

He didn’t want to come to work Nov. 24 and see an empty stadium. He did, and he and the seniors who helped turned the program around deserved more. He won’t have to worry about these things in Tampa.

Six wins there will guarantee a bowl game. The Bulls play in front of an average of more than 44,000 fans at home. Despite its young, 16-year history, USF has never had a worse season than the 3-9 campaign it just endured.

And I believe those are some of the reasons why he left. And I know he’ll succeed.

Behind closed doors, Taggart is a brilliant football mind. When I criticized the play of quarterback Kawaun Jakes in 2011, he showed me film of how his QB was getting drilled on every throw, how the offensive line was missing assignments and how the receivers weren’t running sharp, crisp routes.

I was too distracted by NASA-type codes on the projector identifying the play being watched to pay attention.

When I sat down with Bobby Rainey in November of 2011, the running back told me this: “He’s so smart. I’m not lying. He knows his stuff about football. He knows his offense inside-out.â€

Jakes said of Taggart: “He knows some football. There’s a lot of history that goes with it. His offense takes time. You got to be willing to learn because there’s so many different things you can do and variations of things you can do to make one play look like another play.â€

Said tight end Jack Doyle: “I remember he read me a play in our first individual meeting and I’m like, ‘Wow.’ It was crazy learning (the offense) at first. Only people that have been through it would know. It’s so much more complex, you can build so much from this offense and you can do whatever you want.â€

Legendary WKU coach Jack Harbaugh: “I think Willie Taggart is one of the top 10 coaches in intercollegiate football right now. I think with the way he’s changed the culture (at WKU), it’s now on the cusp or brink of being relevant in the intercollegiate football world. That’s largely due to Willie Taggart and what he’s done to that program.â€

Taggart’s departure was not a slight to his WKU family, which he loves dearly. It was a move he had to make for Willie Taggart. A move that came sooner than I thought, but knew would eventually come.

He’s not coming back to the Hill, but Hilltopper fans should be thankful for what he did for the program and where it stands.

Now it’s up to the WKU brass to find a comparable replacement for Taggart.

Finding his equal will be impossible.

[GaUSFBull]

One thing that did bother me in the article:

Taggart is a coach who reads everything. Everything. From blogs to tweets to articles to Facebook posts. He is a mad scientist, constantly concerned with the perception of his team and his own coaching abilities.

That's going to be worse here than he ever had it in Bowling Green and I hope he doesn't continue this time waster down here .... Focus on the football.

Agreed - coaches have enough to do where they should never be on blogs, message boards, etc. He will be much more under the microscope now, he should worry much less about perception and more about the things he can do to help USF win.

[E.T.]

That was one situation ... I expect Coach T to be a better coach each season.

This will be a big transition, but we will win during it.

Go BULLS !!!