SALUTE TO VETERANS BOWL: Former Tide player now coach Taylor following in footsteps of father

Former Alabama walk-on and grad assistant Lance Taylor brought the Western Michigan Broncos to the Salute to Veterans Bowl last week, falling to South Alabama on Saturday (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

He always figured he was destined for work in his father’s construction company.

Lance Taylor was the type of player who would have been a star at a place like South Alabama or Western Michigan, a guy with enough talent who knew the proper work ethic, attitude and determination will tip the scales in his favor.

But Taylor was determined to play at the University of Alabama because his father had played for the Crimson Tide. James had been a running back in the mid 1970s under Paul “Bear” Bryant, playing on teams that compiled a 33-3 record, won three Southeastern Conference titles and a national championship.

Lance wasn’t nearly as fortunate, walking on at Alabama in 1999 and hanging around until 2003. Now the head coach at Western Michigan, Taylor’s resume includes an SEC title (1999), but a lot of people don’t know the tumultuous period he endured in Tuscaloosa that included an NCAA investigation and subsequent penalties, a coach who was fired before he ever coached a game and four head coaches in five years.

After he graduated with a degree in management, he played for two Arena Football League teams and a pair of Arena 2 teams over the next three years. He was lifting weights in Alabama’s football facility in 2007, as he tells the story, when new Crimson Tide football coach Nick Saban walked in looking for former football players who could help with Saban’s transition as the new coach.

Truth be told, Saban already knew to look for Taylor because the latter had built a relationship with director of player personnel Geoff Collins.

“We had some mutual connections,” Taylor said, “and they were looking for a former player.”

Saban hired Taylor as a graduate assistant, which turned into a career that includes Alabama (2007-08), Appalachian State (2009), New York Jets (2010-12), Carolina Panthers (2013 and 2017-18), Stanford (2014-16), Notre Dame (2019-21) and Louisville (2022) before he earned his first head coaching position at Western Michigan on Dec. 8, 2022.

So what was that first year like working for Saban as a graduate assistant?

“You never raise your hand, you speak when you’re spoken to, you’d better know your role,” Taylor said. “But one of the things I appreciated about Coach Saban, it didn’t matter whether you’re the offensive coordinator, the defensive coordinator, the GA, the secretary, the janitor, he’s going to coach everybody hard and he’s going to hold everyone to the same standard. At practice, he would get after us as GAs, especially running the scout team – the look wasn’t right or the scout team player didn’t do the right thing -- he was going to hold you accountable just like he did the coaches.

“It was perfect for me. As a first-time coach, really learning what it takes to be successful. I soaked up every minute of it. I was a young guy, didn’t have a family, didn’t have kids, so every minute I spent at the building, I wanted to because I wanted to be successful as a coach. I wanted to know what it took to be great. I also wanted to prove that I could do it. For me at that time, it was the perfect match. It really showed me my calling.”

Instead of going back to Mount Vernon, Alabama, and taking over his father’s construction company, he had to tell his father he was getting into coaching instead.

“He was the one who actually pushed me to go do it,” Taylor said. “I’ve always leaned on him for advice and he just saw it from the other lens. One, my dad always saw I was a leader on the field and helped coach the young guys. He always said that he felt like I could be a coach.

“The other thing was, his perspective was, become a GA, get your master’s degree paid for while you’re going to school. No matter what you go into in life, whether it’s business or sports, you get to learn from one of the greatest to do it.”   

He still keeps in touch with his former employer, even though Saban is now an ESPN analyst.

“I talk to Coach about once a year,” he said. “Every offseason, we connect. I actually talked to him several times this past offseason. He was recommending a guy. I told him about someone who had worked on his staff and I was looking to hire him as our defensive coordinator and we talked a bunch. Coach has always been great. He’s going to call you back. It’s going to be an ‘unknown’ number. And up until the last year, that was the only way to get in touch with him because he didn’t text, he didn’t e-mail, there was no social media. Now it’s really neat to watch him as an analyst. One, he does an excellent job. But I think he shows everybody he has way more personality – that funny side – that most people don’t get to see.”

Taylor’s first bowl as a head coach didn’t turn out as he would have liked (Western Michigan lost 30-23), but the Broncos looked every bit the part of a Lance Taylor-coached team. Any shortcomings in talent were made up by hard work and a commitment to doing it the right way.

He was asked after the loss if he could critique his first trip back to his home state as a coach since 2008.

“I thought our guys were ready to play, we came out with the right intent,” Taylor said. “They switched their focus from gift suites and bowl events and all the other distractions to let’s play a game. I was just really proud of the way the guys showed up tonight and competed for four quarters. They gave everything that they had and left it all on the field. And they can look at themselves in the mirror tonight. For that, I’m very thankful.”

Before he stepped away from the microphone, Taylor took the time to thank all the fans who made the trip from Kalamazoo, Mich., along with his family and friends who made the trip from the Mobile area. Then he got up, shook every media member’s hand in the room and hugged each of the four South Alabama players there for the press conference, along with South Alabama coach Major Applewhite.

“This is a great bowl,” Taylor said. “I appreciate the people who put this bowl game on. It’s a great city. They have treated us great.”

If Saturday’s game was any indication, Taylor made the right choice when he elected to get into coaching.

And what would have happened if Geoff Collins didn’t recommend Taylor for a coaching position to Saban in 2007?

“I’m running a construction company in Mount Vernon, Alabama,” he said.