It’s late December and Willie Taggart has just finished watching his former team – USF – defeat South Carolina in thrilling fashion to capture the Birmingham Bowl. But the chief architect of the Bulls’ fantastic season – 11 wins including a bowl victory – was forced to watch it far from hundreds of miles away.
Three weeks earlier, Taggart announced he was leaving USF after four seasons to take the head coaching job at Oregon. The decision meant he wouldn’t be on the field for the game, instead focusing his attention on rebuilding a Ducks program coming off a 4-8 season – its worst since 1991.
It was a bittersweet moment, but Taggart was still connected to his players.
Moments after the game, Taggart received one text message and then another.
“After the bowl game, a couple of guys texted me as soon as they got into the locker room and that was pretty gratifying,” Taggart told the Orlando Sentinel. “Guys saying, ‘Coach, I hope we made you proud.’ ‘I love you coach.’ And ‘Thanks for everything that you did for me.’ That made you feel special and know you did things the right way.
“I showed my wife and said, ‘This is what it’s all about. This is what coaching is all about.’”
It’s a little more than a month and a half later and the 40-year-old Taggart has hit the ground running at his new job. He’s living in a hotel near campus while he waits for his family to make the move to Oregon, which he says they’ll do after his kids finish the school year.
“It’s been going well,” he said of the transition. “We’re moving in the right direction. We had a very successful recruiting class and now we’re in the process of recruiting our current guys and getting to know them as well.”
Taggart talked with the Sentinel on the obstacles he faced and his outlook for the future during his tenure.
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Question: What was your biggest challenge when you first took the job?
Answer: “I think understanding Oregon overall, everything about it. The university, the community, the media and then our players … understanding what when on and what is tradition here and trying to put a plan together on how to move forward.”
Q: You took the job two weeks after USF’s regular-season finale, how quickly was the process from the time you were contacted by Oregon to the time you took the job?
A: “It was quick. I think I met with [Oregon athletics director] Rob [Mullens] on a Thursday in Dallas and then I was up in New York that following week and met with him again there and that’s when I was offered the job. It happened pretty fast.”
Q: Was it a hard sell for you and your family or was it an easy decision?
A: “It was tough because of the relationship that I had with our players there at USF and with Tampa being home for me and the people there at USF just being able to tell them that I was going somewhere else was really tough because they did so much for me and were very helpful in us rebuilding that program so that part was very tough especially telling the players that I had to leave. I was so close to our players and they did everything that I asked of them and they did a remarkable job of turning that program around. It was really tough leaving them but once I met with them and told them what I was doing and things got a lot easier. They cheered for me in our meeting room and each one of those guys came by one-on-one and met with me in my office as I was cleaning things out and that made things a little easier for me … they didn’t want me to leave but they were excited about the opportunity but that says a lot about those kids.”
Q: Do you remember what you said when you told them you were leaving?
A: “I just told them it was one of the hardest decisions that I had to make in my life. It was tough but I just felt like it was right for me and my family. And we all have goals and things we want to get accomplished and I felt like it was the best thing for me to do in order to accomplish those goals but it was just tough leaving them because they did everything for me … they appreciated me and they believed in me and that was the toughest thing of it all was just leaving them.”
Q: What are you most proud about from your time at USF?
A: “Just the buy-in from the kids. They could have easily went the other way but they bought in and their resilience and perseverance through it all. There were some tough times there early and some tough things off the field but guys bought in and turned it around and improved. One of those ways was academically how much we improved from the time that I got there until the time that I left. When I left there we had a team GPA of 2.92 and that was far better when I arrived. To me that’s when things changed for us when things go better off the field we saw improvements on it.”
Oregon named former USF coach Willie Taggart as its next head football coach.
The move was first reported by ESPN’s Brett McMurphy Wednesday morning.
“We are thrilled to welcome Willie, his wife, Taneshia, their sons, Willie Jr. and Jackson, and their daughter, Morgan,” UO athletic director Rob…
Oregon named former USF coach Willie Taggart as its next head football coach.
The move was first reported by ESPN’s Brett McMurphy Wednesday morning.
“We are thrilled to welcome Willie, his wife, Taneshia, their sons, Willie Jr. and Jackson, and their daughter, Morgan,” UO athletic director Rob…
Q: You had a very limited window to recruit after being hired in early December, what was your message to high school recruits?
A: “I told them my vision on how we want to win a championship and how we’re going to go about doing it with the right kind of guys and trying to get a good staff in here to help do that. The thing that I was most impressed about was the kids that I called and spoke with said ‘Coach, Oregon has been my dream school.’ It was amazing hearing so many guys say that – not just out West but guys on the East Coast. I think what it was is so many of these kids grew up watching Oregon with all of the new uniforms, the up-tempo offense, winning and the Heisman Trophy winner and a lot of these guys were seeing that and they wanted to be a part of that when they were young. Now hearing that on the phone got me excited. These are the guys I want to talk to. It was fun. They let you know then that Oregon is a national brand and you can go anywhere in this country and they know about Oregon.”
Q: Do you approach things differently now at Oregon than you first did when you got to USF?
A: “Not quite. You try to figure everything out. The culture, what things were like before and why things got bad. You try and look at all of those things. I think one thing for me personally is each one of these jobs that I’ve taken over are all similar in a certain way where as a lot of similarities to why they were the way that they were so I think those things help with the transition in trying to change the culture because you’ve seen it before and you know what it’s going to take in order to change the culture. Those things helped me in this transition putting things together to set forth for our guys to buy in and do things the way we’re going to do it.
“It was different here because they’ve had success and there were a lot of coaches who’ve been here a long time so things were done a certain way. Like I told our players, ‘Coach [Mark] Helfrich was a good football coach. He won a lot of ball games but things don’t always work out like we want them some times but he wasn’t a bad football coach.’ I told our guys they’ve got to step up and be the guys that they intended to be when the decided to come here. It’s just a matter of finding out what went wrong and why it went wrong. Not just what went wrong but what went right as well and put it all together.”
Q: When you first arrived at USF, you had to not only recruit the players but the fan base as well. Do you feel you have to take a similar approach with Oregon?
A: “I do like I did every other job. You want to get them excited and let them know you’re here for them as well and want to do a great job. Again, Oregon has had some success but one of the similarities is we’re going on a downward spiral. Each one of these jobs that I’ve taken over has been going that way. I think the key thing is to stop that downward spiral and then build it back up. That’s what we’ve been able to do at other places. The beauty here is that we have such a passionate fan base in Oregon and the state of Oregon and it’s like you’re the NFL team of the state. So many people love their program and they want to see it back to where it belongs and they want it done the right way.”
Q: Oregon has been typically known for its up-tempo style of offense. What is your vision for the offense moving forward?
A: “Very similar to what we did at USF. We were up-tempo and high scoring. We’re looking to be very similar to what we did there. The Gulf Coast [offense] out here on the Pacific Coast. We look to do that and we have some talent here to get those things done it’s just a matter of those guys coming together. When I say those guys I mean the players. We have to make sure these guys are playing for each other and loving each other, that’s what’s going to make a difference. That’s what made a difference at USF. Our players played for each other, they loved each other and that’s what made the difference.”
Q: How do you replicate that camaraderie with the players here?
A: “We’re doing that now. We have dinner three nights a week with each other – coaches and players – getting to know each other because we have to be one team. You can’t just have players on one side and coaches on the other. We all have to be in this together and get to know each other. That’s really helping us right now. That’s going to take time but every day we have to do things to get us closer to that to where we’re playing for each other.”
USF named Charlie Strong as its next head football coach.
“Charlie is a tremendous leader and mentor for our student-athletes and a widely-respected coach with a resume full of achievements at the highest levels of college football. He combines a drive to win with great integrity and deep, long-standing…
USF named Charlie Strong as its next head football coach.
“Charlie is a tremendous leader and mentor for our student-athletes and a widely-respected coach with a resume full of achievements at the highest levels of college football. He combines a drive to win with great integrity and deep, long-standing…
Q: A few weeks after you took the job, there was a report of an incident where three players were hospitalized after what was reported as grueling strength and conditioning workouts. [Strength and conditioning coach Irele Oderinde was suspended for a month without pay by the University after an internal investigation and Taggart issued an apology.] Is that a case where Oregon’s national brand led to things becoming a national story so quickly?
A: “It blew up because it wasn’t reported accurately and that’s what was frustrating about it all. You respect all reporting and you respect the media but you also want to be fair and accurate and the way it was reported wasn’t accurate and that’s why it blew up the way that it did. That was unfortunate because again we just started and it brought a negative light. It was easy for people to just say we’re out trying to kill our guys because we just got here. That wasn’t the case and you just look at our player’s response to it all and it says a lot. It’s unfortunate because it was told differently and everyone took it and ran with it.
“I was really disappointed in the person that reported it because he spoke with me before he reported it and he didn’t even write anything about our conversation about what accurately went on. That was disappointing. It was a learning lesson as well. I think the people here and the people around our program know including the players that were actually in the hospital that there was nothing negative that went on. I think again that situation there actually helped us get a little closer. A little adversity when we first started off. It brought us closer as a team and as a staff.
“I don’t think there is a coach out there that wants any of his players in the hospital. It was sad because it wasn’t that way. That’s how it was portrayed and everyone thought that’s what we did here. Look, the ones that know me and understand who I am know that was not true and I’m all about our players. Our folks here understood and did their investigation and saw that it wasn’t that way. It was unfortunate that our young men were in the hospital and glad they got out and were able to move on from that.
“We had a player panel where the parents [of incoming recruits] got to come in and ask the players anything and we had the players who were in the hospital on that panel so the parent could ask them questions so they got the truth from it all and moved on from there.”
mmurschel@orlandosentinel.com
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