Willie Taggart is a below-average football coach, at least judging from his body of work. He has an overall losing record, does not own a conference championship, has never won a bowl game and was nearly fired last year because his offenses at the University of South Florida couldn’t score touchdowns.
So how did Taggart go from USF to the University of Oregon — one of the top jobs in the country — where he just signed a five-year contract worth $16 million, and that’s not even including hefty performance bonuses if they are reached, two new cars, a country club membership and a Nike deal?
Well, you can trace it all back to former Manatee County school district superintendent Rick Mills, a notion that is not nearly as absurd as it sounds upon first glance.
Think about it: Mills ran former Manatee High football coach Joe Kinnan out of the school district in 2014, right?
Then Taggart — knowing his team couldn’t score points — wisely hired Kinnan in the spring of 2015 to turn his prehistoric power offense into a spread attack so innovative it became one of the nation’s most prolific.
The result was Taggart going 10-2 this season at USF — the most wins in school history — and Oregon didn’t hesitate to grab him. Of course Duck Nation now expects the Palmetto native and Manatee High grad to produce a national championship, and maybe he can pull it off. We’ll see.
Now consider this for a moment: What would have happened had Mills and Kinnan never butted heads? Kinnan would still be at Manatee High, having won his 300th game by now, and Taggart, in all likelihood, would have been fired by USF last year.
Taggart went 2-10 in his first season at USF in 2013 and the offense was ranked 122nd in the country, scoring an average of 13.2 points per game. This season his offense was ranked second in the country, scoring an average of 43.6 points per game.
Behind the scenes, Kinnan was the biggest reason for the dramatic change. It was just never talked about or written anywhere.
A change at QB
Taggart, who played for Kinnan at Manatee, brought in his former coach as an advisor and he implemented the spread offense, which was basically the same offense as Manatee High ran when Kinnan coached there. Heck, I’ll bet you didn’t know Auburn even runs part of Manatee’s old offense.
And it was Kinnan, according to insiders, who recommended to Taggart that Quinton Flowers become the starting quarterback after seeing him on film. Flowers — who reminded Kinnan of former Manatee High star Tommie Frazier — was one of the most exciting players in the country this year and will be a Heisman trophy favorite in 2017.