If there was any chance Willie Taggart would keep his job and stay the Florida State football coach, that’s all gone now after the Seminoles lost to Miami.
Willie Taggart has been on the hot seat ever since Florida State hired him it would seem. Things only got hotter in Year 2 and after losing to the rival Miami Hurricanes on Saturday, any chance Taggart had of convincing FSU he is still the man for the job is long gone.
Florida State has to move on from Taggart and give him the $17 million buyout his agent negotiated as part of his contract. Florida State boosters have been busy raising the funds for the better part of the last year when it became clear Taggart was in over his head and this job was going to be the death of his dream job.
It’s a significant buyout to be sure, but paying him to leave is much better than the alternative of paying him to coach and letting this once-great program continue to slide into the depths of irrelevancy.
The Florida State-Miami rivalry is one of the best in the game. This game used to be the game to watch. But today? It was an afterthought behind Georgia-Florida on one of the weakest college football schedules in recent memory. And still, FSU-Miami wasn’t much interest for fans to even bother tuning in to ABC to check out what was going on.
And for the die-hard fans who wouldn’t think about missing a second of FSU football? Well, they’re the ones who have led the fire Taggart charge. FSU fans are smart and they know he isn’t cut out for this job. He never should have had the job in the first place, but hindsight is always 20/20. They made this situation and they can either continue to live with it or they can fix it.
Florida State isn’t going to be great again and close the gap on Clemson in the ACC with Taggart as the head coach. The longer he remains the head coach, the longer FSU continues to languish in mediocrity.
And mediocrity might be putting it nicely because Florida State may miss a bowl game for the second time in a row under Taggart.
The last time Florida State missed consecutive bowl games under the same coach was in 1974-1975 under Darrell Mudra who went 4-18 in two years. He lost his job and Bobby Bowden came in and the rest is history.
Taggart is the modern era version of Mudra. Is there a modern era version of Bowden waiting to get the job and turn this program into the perennial power it once was? The latter remains to be seen, but it’s clear Taggart ain’t it.
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