Willie Taggart won’t coach his first football game at Florida State for another three months, but he already has scored major points with FSU’s administration and faculty for the turnaround his team is delivering in the classroom.
It was just one year ago that FSU’s football team was flagged for producing the lowest Academic Progress Rate among Power 5 football programs. The Seminoles posted a 939 (out of a possible 1000), which not only was the lowest score of any team on FSU’s campus, but it was the only sport to check in lower than 950.
It also represented a drop in the football team’s performance for a third consecutive year.
The NCAA is expected to reveal this year’s APR rates today, and while that information is not yet available, all signs from Taggart’s first six months on campus are unmistakably positive.
“His push for academics is beyond what I actually thought would be possible,” said Pam Perrewé, who is in her seventh year as FSU’s faculty representative for athletics. “When he came and spoke to the faculty, he said he didn’t really feel inclined to give his assistant coaches bonuses for winning bowl games. He said, ‘That’s their job. I want to give bonuses when their student-athletes are performing well in the classroom.'”
Those comments to the faculty were made on the day Taggart was introduced as FSU's new head coach in early December.
Six months later, Taggart and his staff are receiving cheers across campus for backing up those words.
“Attendance in classes has gone up ten-fold,” Perrewé said. “Football players are going to tutoring, they’re going to classes.”
While strong class attendance might sound basic, it had been becoming a bigger and bigger problem during the final stages of Jimbo Fisher’s tenure. And it was one of the reasons the Seminoles’ APR rate was one of the worst in Division-I football.
The only Power 5 schools besides FSU to even score below 950 in football last year were Texas Tech (947), Kansas (943) and West Virginia (940).
“Everything’s going in the right direction,” FSU athletics director Stan Wilcox said of the football team’s progress under Taggart. “That’s one of Willie’s big things – making sure, No. 1, our kids are going to class and doing their work. It’s paramount for him, just as it is for me, that our kids understand the importance of competing in the classroom, the same way they are competing on the playing field. And our kids are responding very well to that.”
One of the ways Taggart has sparked the turnaround is by dividing the team into 10 accountability groups. If a player misses a class or academic requirement, everyone in his group has to run early morning sprints as punishment.
“When you know that you’re going to be held accountable by your teammates, that makes a difference,” Wilcox said. “Those are the people that you’re around the most. That’s a great way to have everyone holding each other accountable – as well as looking out for each other. It’s important to have your teammates pulling your coat tails when they know you’re maybe not doing the right things.”
The positive reports have even reached the desk of FSU President John Thrasher.
"All of our other sports have really always been pretty good [in the APR]," Thrasher told Warchant this week. "If we can move football up to that range, we're going to be outstanding. And I have no doubt that he'll do that."
As excited as others around the university have been about the football team’s progress, Taggart made it clear that there is still plenty of work to do. He said his players are back on the right track, but there is room to grow.
“We were a lot better – a lot better academically,” Taggart said. “Our ultimate goal is to get to a team GPA of 3.0. We’re not there yet, but that’s the goal. … That’s why these young men are here. And we’ve got to do our part to hold them accountable and make sure they’re doing what they said they were gonna do.”
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