Nick Saban anointed Kamario Taylor. The SEC is about to find out if he's right
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This is all new to him. The attention, the adulation, the coronation.
“I’m just a kid from Macon,” Kamario Taylor says.
That’s Macon, Mississippi. Population 2,400. About 35 minutes from Starkville, or nowheresville unless you’re looking for it.
Or until Nick Saban pulls out the foundational phrase of the Bible to explain Taylor, who has made all of five career starts as the Mississippi State quarterback.
“He is the truth and the light,” Saban said.
In college football in the South, there’s Jesus and there’s Nick Saban. In that order. Hopefully.
So when Saban was trying to describe the play of Taylor while among the hyperbolic heads on ESPN, and said he was “really, really good” and that “he could be a big time player” — and well, it just wasn’t enough.
So why not compare him to the Almighty?
“I didn’t see it, but I heard about it,” Taylor said. “Just knowing that he acknowledges or even notices me is crazy.”
It’s about to get all kinds of crazy in Kamario World.
Mississippi State hasn’t been relevant since before Dan Mullen left for Florida, and the program drifted into a steady diet of noon kickoffs on the SEC Network. Even Mike Leach and his prolific offense could do only so much.
It has forever been the heaviest lift in the SEC, where only one coach in the modern era (Mullen) has won and moved on. The others lost, and were never heard from again.
Mullen preached for years the state of Mississippi had elite, blue-chip high school players, and any coach in the state — at Mississippi State or Ole Miss — could build a legitimate program that could compete at the highest level of college football by keeping those players home.
So when the best high school quarterback in years in the state of Mississippi was unsure if the new coach at Mississippi State — his childhood dream school — wanted him, the most important player in the state nearly got out.
A day later, and hours after he was officially hired, Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby got in a car and drove the 30 miles to Macon. Walked into the gym at Noxubee County High School and saw Taylor, a 6-4, 230-pound freak of an athlete, dunking a basketball. In slides.
“Told him to quit playing basketball,” Lebby said.
Lebby sold it, and Taylor bought it, and the family legacy at Mississippi State held firm. Taylor’s mom went to MSU, and her younger brother was a quarterback and wide receiver at MSU in the 2000s. Kamario’s two aunts (his dad’s sisters) also went to MSU.
Now imagine Taylor, barely a season of college football in the books and a starter for all of two games, and somehow one of the hottest potential commodities in the transfer portal.
He completed just 53% of his passes in those two starts, but threw for 419 yards and rushed for 236 yards in two standalone games: the Egg Bowl loss to Ole Miss, and the Duke’s Mayo Bowl loss to Wake Forest.
In each game, despite the result, he was the biggest surprise on the field — with all eyes on the games.
Not long after, he was one of the biggest what-if stories of the transfer portal.
“Never really thought about it,” Taylor said this summer. “I mean, all I see is Mississippi State. My dream has been to play quarterback here. Why would I walk away from that?”
Especially considering what they’re building. Lebby and MSU spent two tough seasons of transition, piecing together a concept and culture that nearly took hold last season.
They lost in overtime to Tennessee and Texas, and lost by two at Florida. All three games should’ve been wins, all were gut-punch losses.
The difference between five and eight wins, and a whole lot of momentum and attention. Not that it matters after the past two weeks of this season, after MSU dismantled Minnesota and South Carolina on the road to set up Saturday’s SEC home opener against Missouri.
The Bulldogs are 3-0, and Taylor is the hottest quarterback in the game. He’s completing nearly 70% of his passes, has 11 touchdown passes and is averaging 6.6 yards per carry.
And he’s making it look easy with high velocity, difficult throws by flicking his wrist.
“An incredibly talented player,” said Minnesota coach PJ Fleck.
You want the truth and the light? Do something rare with the next five weeks of the season, when MSU plays five straight games against ranked SEC teams. It’s Missouri and Alabama in Starkville, followed by a game at LSU, Oklahoma in Starkville and a road trip to Texas.
Come out of that stretch unscathed or not worse for the wear, and what in the world will Saban — and everyone else — say next?
Taylor strolled around SEC media days in July, a GQ fit on a maroon suit and a smile as wide as the Mississippi Delta. The kid from tiny Macon, barely two years removed from high school, was representing Mississippi State.
At one point, he shook his head and laughed at the absurd dichotomy of a player with two career starts projecting as the face of the program.
“I'm nowhere near where I want to be,” Taylor said. “But I always tell our fans to bring their popcorn and prop their feet up. They’re gonna be in for a show.”
Just hold off on the truth and light stuff.
For now, anyway.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nick Saban anointed Kamario Taylor. The SEC is about to find out if he's right
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