‘God’s hand was all over this.’ The amazing story that brought Calvin Taylor to UK.
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UK in the 2019 Belk Bowl
The University of Kentucky will play Virginia Tech in the 2019 Belk Bowl on Dec. 31. Read more about the Wildcats’ opponent and destination.
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As Calvin Taylor strode the halls at the Augusta (Ga.) Christian School in early winter, 2015, he was continually peppered with one question.
Everyone in pigskin-crazy Georgia knew college football’s national signing day was approaching. The 6-foot-9, then-270-pound Taylor was besieged with inquiries about his college future that he could not answer.
“It was real taxing for him because everybody is asking, ‘Who you gonna sign with? Where you gonna go?’” says Keith Walton, Taylor’s high school football coach. “And there was nothing. I’m telling you, his recruitment was a desert.”
On New Year’s Eve, when the Kentucky Wildcats (7-5) face the Virginia Tech Hokies (8-4) in the Belk Bowl, UK senior defensive tackle Taylor will complete one of the most improbable tales of success in Wildcats football history.
The story of how a player that no one wanted has become one of the 2019 SEC leaders in quarterback sacks and an NFL prospect is so unlikely that people in Augusta see only one viable explanation.
“I’m telling you, God’s hand was all over this,” Walton says.
Passion for basketball
Part of the reason Calvin Taylor had little interest from football coaches is that he had spent the early part of his high school career in pursuit of a college basketball scholarship.
For a 6-9 teenager, that seemed a logical course. Taylor even played summer hoops with the Southern Stampede, an Atlanta-based AAU program on Nike’s EYBL circuit.
“Basketball, at first, is what I was thinking,” Taylor says. “I guess people thought I did football as just a hobby. But my passion ended up moving from basketball to football, so I decided to pursue (football).”
His prior focus on hoops meant Taylor had not attended football camps at colleges where coaches could evaluate him. Nor had he gone to the exposure events held by recruiting services to “get his name out.”
“Because all he did was travel basketball, AAU, it limited how much he could be in the weight room with us,” Walton says. “So his body, even though he was very big, he looked very underdeveloped.”
Nevertheless, as Taylor entered his senior season of high school football, he seemed to hold two trump cards.
One of his Augusta Christian teammates, Zach Giella, was being recruited by big-name schools such as Clemson, LSU and Michigan.
“Every time the coaches came on campus to talk to Giella, they also saw Calvin,” Walton says.
Secondly, Taylor did have one pledge from an FBS university. “We had an offer from Temple the summer going into his senior year,” Walton says.
As no other scholarships were forthcoming, that Temple offer became Taylor’s security blanket.
“I thought I was going to Temple for sure,” Taylor says. “My heart and mind were set on that. And then, that went away.”
Things go wrong
Taylor had a long-standing date set for his official visit to Temple. Yet as that week approached, the player was hearing nothing from the Philadelphia school.
When Walton called Temple to firm up details for his player’s visit, he was told the assistant who had been recruiting Taylor was no longer employed.
“I go in and tell Calvin, ‘That offer, it holds no water,’” Walton says.
In the meantime, Taylor’s Augusta Christian teammate, Giella, shut down his recruitment and became an early enrollee at Clemson.
“So there are no more schools coming around here at all,” Walton says. “Signing day comes, nothing is happening (for Taylor). I mean, we’ve got crickets.”
Walton knew Taylor was “raw” as a football prospect. But “I’m like, ‘Calvin, I’m telling you, you can play at the Division I level,’” he says.
The coach decided to try to place Taylor with a junior college. That would give the big lineman another chance to impress D-I coaches.
Instead, that set in motion the actions that immediately landed Taylor in the SEC.
The unlikely path to UK
The email that Taylor got from junior-college coach Antonio Anderson was brief and to the point:
“Hey, 6-9, where do you think you are going to go (to college)?”
Taylor gave Anderson, a former Syracuse University and Dallas Cowboys defensive lineman, his phone number and the two talked.
Anderson found out that Taylor’s academic profile did not fit that sometimes associated with the juco athlete. “Academically, he’s a brain,” Walton says of Taylor. “He’s brilliant.”
Once Anderson viewed his football video, Taylor said he told him, ”‘You are not a juco kid. Let me reach out to some people.’”
Anderson contacted then-University of Kentucky defensive line coach Jimmy Brumbaugh (now at Colorado).
Says Taylor: “Literally, that same night, Coach Brumbaugh called me.”
In the Kentucky football offices, the development possibilities for a 6-9, 275-pound lineman with a basketball background captivated the imagination.
“In Calvin, you saw a big, athletic guy that we thought could definitely turn into an offensive tackle if we needed him,” UK Coach Mark Stoops says.
So some seven weeks after signing day, the guy with no scholarship offers had an official visit set with an SEC school.
On the Sunday morning of that visit to Kentucky, Taylor and his mother, Deborah Nickens, found themselves sitting in Stoops’ office.
Stoops looked Taylor in the eye and said, “’Buddy, we’re going to offer you. It’s going to be a lot of hard work for you. But if you are willing to do it, we want you to be a Wildcat.’”
His ordeal of uncertainty near an end, words failed Taylor. “It was like three or four seconds of silence,” he says. “I was just sitting there in shock.”
Stoops filled the void. “He goes, ‘Are you going to commit?’” Taylor says. “Then, I said, “’I want to be a Wildcat, too. I want to commit.’”
A Kentucky success story
Over the last five school years, the guy nobody wanted has used old-fashioned toil and sweat to transform himself into one of the more productive down defensive linemen in the SEC.
Last year, during Kentucky’s 10-3 breakthrough season, Taylor started nine games. He had four tackles in UK’s Citrus Bowl win over Penn State. He sacked the quarterback in the Wildcats’ upset of No. 14 Mississippi State.
This season, Taylor stands among the SEC leaders in QB sacks with 7.5. The now 311-pound UK lineman has also forced three fumbles and knocked down four passes.
“It’s a great story for Calvin,” Stoops says. “Nobody was recruiting him. We took a shot on him, and he did his part, worked extremely hard.”
Taylor’s size and senior-year production have piqued NFL curiosity.
“I would have liked to have seen a little more down-to-down (production), but he still graded out very well,” says Cam Mellor, an analyst for Pro Football Focus. “... This season alone helped him dramatically. In the middle (of the defensive front), to lead the team in (quarterback) pressures, that’s a big deal. ... I definitely think he’s got a future.”
This Christmas, as Taylor reflects on those unsettling days when no college football program would offer him a scholarship, he now feels only gratitude.
“Looking back on it, that instilled something in me,” Calvin Taylor says. “I think, honestly, it was a blessing (that) I came up that way. It just made me real hungry to prove myself. So I always chose to work hard.”
Belk Bowl
Kentucky vs. Virginia Tech
When: Noon Tuesday, Dec. 31
Where: Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C.
Records: UK 7-5; Virginia Tech 8-4
TV: ESPN
This story was originally published December 24, 2019 at 7:29 AM.
