Until Chad Morris officially announces a coaching staff, there’s going to be one rumor after another.
That’s the nature of the world of college football these days.
Wednesday, the latest rumor on the defense wasn’t surrounding John Chavis as defensive coordinator. By now it would be a surprise if that doesn’t happen.
No, this one was Arkansas State secondary coach Trooper Taylor might be one of Morris’ choices to fill out the defensive staff.
Seriously. The folks throwing this one out are convinced it’s a real possibility. Excuse me, but I’ll have to see this one before believing it.
Taylor has been named several times on lists of the top recruiters in college football. That was mostly during his tenures at Auburn, Oklahoma State and Tennessee.
He sorta deflected that in an interview with AuburnUndercover.com in a 2016 story before he returned to Auburn with Arkansas State:
“I was named a ‘top 25 recruiter’ a couple times, but I never signed a single kid on my own. If I was recruiting a running back, and the running back coach was awful, do you think I could recruit a running back to my school? No. It takes a village. You might get credit because he’s in your area or he mentions your name a lot. But I can promise you this: It took all of us.”
The truth is, though, the only way this makes sense is for his recruiting ability.
Other than running around waving a towel and wearing his hat backwards (which should never be done by any male over the age of 6) there doesn’t appear to be a reason to bring him to Fayetteville.
Don’t listen to all the stuff about NCAA investigations and all that. Yes, it happened at Auburn in 2012, but no wrongdoing was uncovered. Whether they keep an eye on him or not, well, the group in that Kangaroo Court are the only ones that can answer that.
That shouldn’t even be an issue, although there will many in the Great Unwashed in the Razorback Nation that throw that one out there because they refuse to believe otherwise.
No, I don’t think it will happen simply because it would be shocking for anybody with the Hogs to hire anybody from ASU.
Whether it’s been done before I don’t know. I can’t remember anyone going straight from Jonesboro to Fayetteville. Houston Nutt was an assistant there for a year, but that was five years before taking over the wide receivers for Jack Crowe and 13 years before he got the head coaching job.
Would Morris actually hire Taylor?
He was the assistant head coach for Phillip Fulmer at Tennessee from 2004-07. He did play defensive back in college at Baylor and coaches the secondary over in Jonesboro.
In case you’re not aware of it, Chavis was the defensive coordinator on that staff.
And, naturally, these days that’s enough of a connection to get a good rumor going.
Or is it more that just a rumor?
