Coach Trooper Taylor and that backwards ballcap
By Roy Ockert Jr.
Aug. 9, 2014
If you attend an Arkansas State University football game this fall, you won’t be able to miss Trooper Taylor. He’ll be the most excited coach on the sideline, wearing his ballcap backwards and waving a towel.
Taylor is the cornerbacks coach for new ASU head football Coach Blake Anderson, the Red Wolves’ fifth gridiron leader in as many years.
It’s somewhat ironical — in more than one way — that Taylor would wind up at ASU. From 2009-12 he served as assistant head coach and wide receivers coach for the Auburn Tigers, which included a national championship season. He became recognized as one of the best football recruiters in the country.
One of his coaching colleagues there was Gus Malzahn, the offensive coordinator. In 2012 Malzahn left Auburn to become ASU’s head coach. Meanwhile, Auburn’s football fortunes under head Coach Gene Chizik soured, and Chizik was fired. The NCAA investigated recruiting violations, some of which allegedly involved Taylor.
Thus, after one successful year Malzahn abandoned his home state to return to Auburn and replace Chizik. One of his first actions was to fire the entire Auburn coaching staff. Taylor was out of a job but still had a nice contract paying him $212,500 a year through the past June 30.
He spent much of the past year getting back in touch with things he hadn’t been able to do previously — watching his son Blaise play football while serving as a volunteer coach at his high school and watching his daughter Starr play basketball. Both are outstanding athletes.
Then came another ironical twist. Arkansas State hired another new head football coach, who happened to be Taylor’s former roommate and football teammate at Baylor many years earlier. That would be Anderson, who wanted his old friend on his staff as a cornerbacks coach.
After coaching many outstanding wide receivers over the years, including some who went on to the National Football League, Taylor accepted a return to the defensive side of football for the first time since his graduate assistant days at Baylor in 1995-96.
That certainly hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm for the game or the young men entrusted to his unit. That will be clear from the moment ASU kicks off its season at home against Montana State on Aug. 30.
That backward cap, by the way, isn’t Taylor trying to look cool or younger than his years. He took it off during a recent speech to the Kiwanis Club of Jonesboro and then put it back on to tell the story behind the way he wears.
A native of Cuero, Texas, he grew up in a family with 16 children, eight boys and eight girls, and he was the 10th born to a hard-working mom and dad.
The eight boys slept in one bedroom and the eight girls in another, and their dad built stacking bunk beds for each side of the rooms. Taylor’s dad, who worked at two jobs to make ends meet, had the duty of waking the boys up each day. And each day he reminded them to make good choices that day.
Turning his ballcap backward, he would also give Trooper a kiss through the slats in the bed and say, “I love you.”
But one day, shortly after he had turned 12 years of age, Trooper told his dad that he was too old for “that stuff.” He never saw him alive again. His dad died of a massive heart attack between jobs that day, and Trooper was left to live with his last words.
He wears his cap backwards out of respect and remembrance of his father.
Thanks to the efforts of his mother, various coaches along the way and some charitable organizations, he overcame that tragic event and went to Baylor on a football scholarship. He also learned the importance of family.
Nevertheless, as he climbed in the coaching ranks, earning more and more money, some of what was important got away from him, he told the Kiwanians. Almost too late, he realized that he had seen his son play in only two football games. He acknowledges making some bad choices.
That’s why the Auburn-to-ASU transition became a blessing, he said. When Blake Anderson promised his staff a life of “family, faith and football” — meaning time for all three — Taylor jumped at the chance to return to full-time coaching.
The move to Jonesboro also means that son Blaise, a defensive back, will be a freshman on the Red Wolves football team and daughter Starr will play basketball at Jonesboro High School.
That sense of family is another reason why Taylor and other ASU coaches are hoping to form a new support group. Some of their players come from places far from Jonesboro, many from single-parent homes and many from poverty. Their parents won’t be able to come to games very often, if at all.
Taylor said the coaches would like to have some local ASU fans “adopt” a player — perhaps invite him into their home for a meal now and then, to slap him on the back or give him a hug after a game, to attend church together, etc. — in other words, to do what the player’s parent can’t do.
The group doesn’t have a name yet, Taylor said, but anyone interested can contact a member of the coaching staff. A good logo for the group would be a backwards ballcap.
Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.
Attached photo: Kiwanis Club member David Clark (left) thanks Coach Trooper Taylor for his remarks after addressing the organization recently.