02/13 at 01:02 AM

Why Gene Chizik?

Wait, some of you are still stuck on that one. So we’ll ask a different question: Why Trooper Taylor?

As in … why did Trooper Taylor decide to leave Oklahoma State, and other, higher-paying offers on the table to come to Auburn?

Why, when he had coordinator status in Stillwater, Okla.? Why, when, as he told reporters Thursday, he had offers for more money to go other places?

Why would Trooper Taylor, one of the hottest coaches and recruiters in the game, take an assistant’s gig at a place that was, just weeks before, a national punchline?

Why would he come to work for a guy who is 5-19 as a head coach when he could be a head coach himself?

Why?

Curtis Luper? Sure, that had something to do with it. Taylor and Luper, who Chizik hired away from Oklahoma State to coach running backs at AU, are close friends.

But that just got Chizik a sitdown with Taylor.

The rest, well, that was up to the cleaning lady.

“If you treat the cleaning lady right, the rest of us have a chance,” Taylor said.

Huh?

See, Taylor is one of 16 kids. Family isn’t just Christmas and Thanksgiving. It’s not something you put on for guests. It’s Monday mornings, early. It’s the good and the bad. It’s a way of life.

And for Taylor, it’s everything.

He knows it when he sees it. Why? Because he’s always looking.

“You’ll hear me beating that horse to death, but I grew up in a family of 16,” Taylor said. “I was number 10 out of 16. It was eight boys and eight girls. So to me, I don’t take that family stuff lightly.

“Then when I had a chance to meet with the athletic director, those were the first things out of his mouth.”

But that could have been just for show. You know, the smile you put on for your son’s girlfriend the first time he brings her home.

“When you go on a campus, everybody’s trying to show you the great things, and shine your shoes and do all that,” Taylor said. “But you can coach people up to say the right things.”

Everyone, except the cleaning lady. You can’t coach her up.

“As Gene was showing me around the athletic facility,” Taylor said, “there was a cleaning lady who came out of the room upstairs, and she came right up to him and hugged him and said, ‘I haven’t seen you for four or five years.’ … She named both his twins and his little boy, and Jonna (his wife).

“And to me, that told me something. He could have coached (athletics director) Jay (Jacobs) up on what to say. He could have coached Coach (Joe) Whitt up on what to say. But for that cleaning lady to come up out of that room and take her time out and say hello and hug his neck and know his family, I knew that he treated her right when he was here.”

And that was that. That, he said, is family.

As Taylor was heading back to Stillwater, he texted his wife, Evi, with “the cleaning lady made the difference?????”

Taylor’s wife didn’t know it then, but he did.

“If you get a gut feeling about that place, you go with that,” Taylor said. “We never talked money one time. And I can promise you it wasn’t the highest-paid offer that I had to take. But it was the right place for the right reasons, and I really feel good about it.”

That’s family.

MIKE SZVETITZ is sports editor of the Opelika-Auburn News. He may be reached at 737-2513.