Florida State moved swiftly Sunday afternoon, handing Willie Taggart a pink slip one day after an embarrassing 27-10 blowout loss to Miami at Doak Campbell Stadium.
Did Taggart inherit a mess in Tallahassee? Yes, no doubt about it. Did it get progressively worse on his watch? Indeed, and then some.
His tenure was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. It ends with an abysmal 9-12 straight-up record and a 7-13-1 against-the-spread mark.
Before Taggart arrived from a one-and-done stretch at Oregon, FSU had gone bowling for 36 consecutive years, the longest such stretch in college football history. Hell, the Seminoles hadn’t had a losing season since the year Taggart was born.
In his first year, though, the Seminoles limped to a 5-7 SU record and a 4-8 ATS mark, losing by 19 points or more six times. They couldn’t protect the quarterback, committed way too many penalties, looked lost from a scheme standpoint in all three phases and demonstrated a lack of effort and intensity on a weekly basis.
FCS foe, Samford, led the ‘Noles nearly the entire game in Week 2 as a 30.5-point road underdog. However, FSU was +4 in turnover margin and rallied for a 36-26 win, although the Bulldogs had a 525-454 advantage in total yards.
Another win in 2018 came at Louisville when FSU mounted a furious rally in the final minute, one that was aided by Bobby Petrino’s knucklehead clock-management decisions. Taggart’s team narrowly escaped with a 28-24 win over a U of L team that finished 2-10 and saw Petrino dismissed.
Year 2 got off to an awful start. FSU blew an 18-point second-half lead at home to Boise State, which had to fly all the way across the country and deal with the stifling heat and humidity in Tallahassee on Aug. 31. Nevertheless, it was the Broncos who got stronger as the game went on, holding the Seminoles scoreless in the second half of a 36-31 victory that was orchestrated by a true freshman QB, Hank Bachmeier, who was making his first career college start on the road.
In Week 2, FSU needed ULM, a middle-of-the-pack Sun Belt Conference program, to miss an extra point that would’ve forced double overtime in a 45-44 OT victory. After losing 31-24 at Virginia, FSU responded with 35-24 and 31-13 home wins over Louisville and North Carolina State, respectively, to improve to 3-2.
Following an open date, FSU got smashed 45-14 at Clemson in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score indicated. Then on Oct. 19, the Seminoles lost 22-20 at Wake Forest with the Demon Deacons’ star QB Jamie Newman on the sidelines in street clothes nursing an injury.
FSU bounced back with a 35-17 home win over a Syracuse team that’s been wretched all year. With a 4-4 record, the ‘Noles were set to host arch-rival Miami, which is enduring its own struggles and came to Tallahassee with an identical 4-4 mark.
The Hurricanes dominated from start to finish, inserting the dagger into Taggart’s tenure.
As the clock approached nearly 3:00 a.m. Eastern on Sunday morning (or late Saturday night, which really would’ve been 4:00 a.m. if not for the time change), FSU’s struggles were even being noted from deep in the bowels of Madison Square Garden in New York City, where Jorge ‘Gamebred’ Masvidal was polishing off his post-fight media obligations after defeating Nate Diaz in the UFC 244 main event, a show that had President Donald Trump in attendance.
As Masvidal, a life-long Miami resident, realized the media was out of questions, he quipped, “Nobody has any questions about my ‘Canes? 305 has been representing all day.”
OUCH!
What’s next at FSU? First, long-time assistant and former defensive lineman Odell Haggins has been named the interim head coach. He went 2-0 in that role after Jimbo Fisher abruptly bolted for College Station at the end of 2017. Haggins led the ‘Noles to a 42-10 home win over ULM and a 42-13 victory over So. Miss at the Independence Bowl.
This isn’t going to be your typical head-coaching search. In August of 2018, former AD Stan Wilcox left FSU to take a job with the NCAA. After a long search to replace Wilcox, the school was unable to land any of its top candidates. Therefore, with the school bleeding money, it decided to remove the interim tag on David Coburn and name him the permanent AD this past May.
As you can see in his bio here, Coburn has zero background in sports. For William Floyd’s sake, the dude is a career politician. At best, he’s a finance guru that was hired to help steer the athletic program out of debt. At worst, he’s an errand boy for school president John Thrasher, who is expected to retire in the next few months.
Coburn demonstrated his ineptitude a few weeks ago when commenting to the media about reports that FSU might be interested in former Florida coach Urban Meyer. He told the Tallahassee Democrat, “If Coach were hit by a bus tomorrow, we would not target Coach Meyer, period. I say that with all due respect to Coach Meyer, but we would not target Steve Spurrier either.”
Coburn isn’t the long-term answer for the AD post at FSU, and everybody knows that. Thrasher is heading into retirement soon. FSU just fired a coach less than two years into his tenure, although this scribe feels as if the dismissal was completely justified. Nevertheless, it’s a quick hook that’ll give pause to anyone considering taking this gig next.
To buy out Taggart and his entire staff, the price tag figures to be just North of $20 million for a school with financial problems galore. Now the FSU administration must convince a head coach to take this job without knowing who his future school president and AD will be at this time next year.
Thrasher’s statement announcing Taggart’s dismissal Sunday included this: “I think very highly of Coach Taggart and wish him well, but in the interest of the university we had no choice but to make a change.”
When the stadium is half-empty on Saturdays, a school is left with no choice. However, candidates to be the next head coach at FSU do have a choice. The Seminoles still have great tradition, a large and loyal – albeit frustrated and impatient – fan base, great facilities and fertile recruiting grounds, but is that enough to overcome an uncertain future for the school from its finances to its occupants of the offices for the school president and the AD?
The Democrat reported Sunday that former Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops is the No. 1 target for the school. Stoops, who is now 59 and retired as OU’s coach after the 2016 season, became the new head coach and general manager of the XFL’s Dallas Renegades nearly nine months ago. Could he bolt on that gig? Of course. Will he? I doubt it.
Bob’s younger brother Mark Stoops spent three seasons as FSU’s defensive coordinator from 2010-2012 before becoming the head coach at Kentucky. The younger Stoops is 52, has a history with the program and has done a solid (but not spectacular) job in Lexington. He wouldn’t be a splashy hire by any means, but he is well respected, has plenty of experience and has strong recruiting connections in Ohio that could pay dividends.
Other potential candidates could include Iowa State’s Matt Campbell, Baylor’s Matt Rhule, Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy, Oregon’s Mario Cristobal, Memphis’s Mike Norvell, Minnesota’s PJ Fleck, Washington State’s Mike Leach, Louisville’s Scott Satterfield and Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables.
Nobody needs to feel bad for Taggart, who was only given 21 games at FSU but had no problem bailing on Oregon after just 12 contests. Most of all, he and his family will be handsomely taken care of with his buyout.
Outside of Clemson, the climb back into the ACC’s elite for FSU shouldn’t be an overly daunting task, but that premise is based on the school hiring one of the country’s top coaches.
Considering all of the aforementioned issues, that’s the challenge facing one of the nation’s most storied programs. For many Seminole fans, this is only the second search for a head football coach in their lifetimes, and the future of Florida State football depends on it.