Aaron Taylor
University of Nebraska
Center/Offensive Guard, 1994-97

• Only Nebraska player in history to earn All-America honors at two different positions (offensive guard and center).
• Claimed 1997 Outland Trophy while guiding Huskers to third undefeated national championship season in four years.
• Led team to three conference titles and an impressive 49-2 overall record in four seasons.
• Played for College Football Hall of Fame coach Tom Osborne.
• Becomes 18th Husker player to enter the Hall.

To say that Aaron Taylor's path to the College Football Hall of Fame is unconventional would be the understatement of the century. How many other inductees spent nearly a decade in Germany, having never put on a pair of shoulder pads until high school?

Yet that is exactly Taylor's path, having arrived in Wichita Falls, Texas, where his father was stationed after a stint in Europe with the Air Force. Texas Tech told him he was too short (6 foot 1). TCU said he was not a Division I player. But Taylor caught the eye of Nebraska offensive line coach Milt Tenopir.

During his recruiting visit to Lincoln, Taylor was asked about interest from other schools. He was honest: His only offer was New Mexico State. Tenopir looked the teenager dead in the eye, saying he did not care about his height, only the size of his heart. He compared him to then-Cornhuskers guard Will Shields, an eventual College Football Hall of Famer. He told him not to expect to play right away, telling him to expect to learn from the more highly-recruited upperclassmen.

All these years later, Omaha is home for Taylor, who would become the only player in Nebraska history to earn First Team All-America honors at two different positions. He looks back at one of the most remarkable stretches in college football history with pride, capped by the Cornhuskers' three national titles.

"My best memory is winning three national titles in the five years I'm here; that's an easy one, right?" Taylor said, who becomes the 18^th Husker player in the Hall and is the program's eighth (of a nation-best nine) Outland Trophy winner. "But along with that, just the structure, the hard work, the strength program, the nutrition program, the coaching, all of that. It was at a championship-level. Success breeds success, and that's kind of the way it felt during the 90s.

"We didn't walk into a game thinking we were going to lose. Our thought process was: 'How much are we going to win by?' That's really what it was, and as an offensive line, our goal was to be eating hot dogs in the middle of the third quarter, watching our backups play the remainder of the game."

Taylor credits his parents, Tenopir and College Football Hall of Fame coach Tom Osborne as his biggest influences, with the former issuing him an early warning. Taylor arrived three days before the upperclassmen his freshman year. He thought he fit in just fine, but when the rest of the team arrived, he called his parents, telling them he was not sure if he could make it as a Husker. Their reply? You made your decision and you're going to stick with it. We turned your bedroom into an office.
 
He is glad he did just that. Remarkably, Taylor played with three other eventual Hall of Famers during Nebraska's dynasty years: Grant Wistrom, Tommie Frazier and Trev Alberts. Their head coach, Osborne, made it, too. The accomplishment is not lost on Taylor, who has heard from numerous old coaches and teammates since the announcement.

"It's kind of like you see the Heisman fraternity or even us Outland Trophy guys, but there's not many guys in the College Football Hall of Fame, and it's such an honor and humbling and man, it's just a really, really cool feeling, almost a surreal feeling," Taylor said. "It's a different fraternity. I don't really know how to explain it. It feels good. It feels really good and it feels like it almost validates all the sacrifices that myself and many others made to get to this point."

Taylor will be honored this Saturday, Oct. 20, with an NFF Hall of Fame On-Campus Salute, presented by Fidelity Investments, during Nebraska's game against Minnesota. He will officially be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame during the 61st NFF Annual Awards Dinner on Dec. 4 in New York City.