Florida State set to hire Willie Taggart
With Jimbo Fisher gone for a bigger payday, Florida State is set to make Willie Taggart its next football coach.
As Jimbo Fisher’s departure seemed more and more inevitable, Willie Taggart surfaced as a candidate for the job at Florida State. After one season at Oregon, Bruce Feldman of Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports has confirmed Taggart is set to be named the next Seminoles’ head coach.
Taggart led the Ducks to a 7-5 record this season, despite being without starting quarterback Justin Herbert for a big chunk of the season, and they’ll play No. 25 Boise State in the AutoNation Cure Bowl in Las Vegas on Dec. 16. But he has pretty deep ties to the state of Florida, as a Bradenton native with family still living in Florida and four seasons as head coach at South Florida (2013-2016) on his resume. A 10-2 campaign in 2016 paved the way for Taggart to make a move up to a Power 5 school, and he went to Oregon to replace Mark Helfrich.
Taggart also spent three seasons as head coach at Western Kentucky, taking the Hilltoppers from 2-10 in his first season to back-to-back 7-5 campaigns in 2011 and 2012.
With Florida State lurking to pluck Taggart as soon as Fisher was officially gone, Oregon reportedly offered him a new contract that would pay him a little over $20 million over five years last week. But that offer is now a moot point.
I'm told Willie Taggart loved his situation at #Oregon but he couldn't pass us the chance to go home especially for a job like #FSU's. He grew up an FSU fan back in the days of Warrick Dunn, Charlie Ward and Amp Lee.
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) December 5, 2017
Sources: Oregon’s Willie Taggart has agreed to become Florida State’s coach https://t.co/fcxi8GKyeI
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) December 5, 2017
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Taggart was a possible candidate for other open head coaching jobs this year, but Feldman passed along he was not leaving Oregon for anywhere other than Florida State if it was available. The opportunity to return home and coach a team you were a fan of is a unique one. But Taggart will also head to Tallahassee to take the highest-profile job he’s ever had, and with the pressure to bring a program coming off a down year back to glory quickly.