Editor's Note: Coach Joe Taylor will be officially inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame during the 62nd NFF Annual Awards Dinner on Dec. 10 in New York City.

Joe Taylor
Head Coach: 233-96-4 (70.6%)
Howard University (1983)
Virginia Union University (1984-91)
Hampton University (1992-2007)
Florida A&M University (2008-12)
 

• Ranks in the FCS Top-10 for coaching winning percentage (70.6%).
• Winningest coach in Hampton history (136 wins), leading Pirates to four Black College National Championships.
• Led teams to 10 conference titles and 10 playoff appearances throughout career.
• Four-time MEAC Coach of the Year.

Joe Taylor always approached coaching as a ministry. When you are trying to improve the lives of others, he says, it is really that simple.

"No matter where I coached, I always had a Fellowship of Christian Athletes huddle group," Taylor said. "When you get your spirit right, you have a chance to get your life right.. So we always attacked it from a mental standpoint with the idea that physical is a given — you're going to lift, you're going to run, you're going to get in shape, you're going to know the plays; it's called discipline. If you don't have that, you're just not going to play."

That mindset served Taylor well, as he enters the College Football Hall of Fame after compiling the third-most career wins among coaches at historically black colleges and universities. He started at Howard for a year, won 60 games across eight years at Virginia Union and then won four Black College National Championships at Hampton across 16 seasons. He followed that up by posting four winning records in five seasons at Florida A&M.

Taylor made the Division II playoffs twice at Virginia Union. He is the winningest coach in Hampton history, overseeing the program's transition from Division II to FCS in 1995. He won a share of the MEAC title at Florida A&M in 2010. His 70.6 winning percentage ranks in the top 10 of FCS coaching history.

Taylor credits his high school coach, Washington D.C. legend Robert Headen, for pointing him to the profession after his playing days at Cardozo High were over. All of these years later, the two still talk multiple times a month. Their bond is representative of the relationships each still has with his former players and assistants.

"I'm really proud of him, because he didn't want to do it," Headen said of Taylor's initial reluctance to coaching. "What happened was his brother was ahead of him at Cardozo, and I had just become the coach there and I tried to get his brother to play and he wouldn't play. And the next year Joe was coming into high school, and he told him who I was. I said: 'Joe, you're gonna be like your brother. You ain't gonna play no football, huh?' I did reverse psych on him. He started playing guard and he did real good, and Joe was an intelligent person, too.

"He got a scholarship to Western Illinois and he went up there and he was in school and he came home during the summer and I said: 'Joe, come on man. You can come and help me out.' He said: 'What? Coach?' I said: 'Come on. I'm coaching a high school all-star team. You can be one of my assistant coaches.' He said: 'I'm still in school.' I said: 'So what, it's a summer job.' That's how it started. From that point on, that's when he started coaching."

Once in the coaching business, Taylor developed many of his philosophies from his college coach, Hall of Famer Darrell Mudra, who was nicknamed "Dr. Victory." He took Mudra's approach of making everyone feel valuable and instilled that same confidence in his own players, realizing that once everybody feels better about their purpose, they perform better on and off the field.

These days, Taylor is in his seventh season as an athletics administrator at Virginia Union, and he currently serves as Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics. The job scratches a different itch for him after spending 40 years mentoring prep and college athletes on the gridiron across the country.

"I transitioned from coaching players to coaching coaches," Taylor said. "And the definition to me of a coach is someone who takes people to places where they cannot go by themselves."