Grins, grillz and feel-good chills as Sac State awaits football playoff opponent
Troy Taylor was a in a festive mood two days before reaching for a bib and fork and attacking the Thanksgiving spread.
Sacramento State’s first-year football coach was beaming about his program’s historic season. He gave the players and staff the holiday weekend off to rest and recharge from an arduous season that still has plenty left to go.
And Taylor spoke about grills.
Not a kitchen or barbecue grill, mind you. But grill, or grillz, like the decorative and sparkling golden teeth cover that Hornets defensive end Dariyn Choates wore with his game gear to the postgame news conference Saturday night after Sac State beat rival UC Davis 27-17 in the Causeway Classic.
Taylor noticed his senior’s mouth piece and laughed.
“I may get one,” Taylor said Tuesday. “Why not? I’ll get a custom grillz. We need to be outside the box. If that means the entire coaching staff gets a grillz, then why not? If this doesn’t get you ready to play, nothing will!”
Taylor appreciates personality in his student athletes, and he calls Choates, “a character” who also happens to attack his studies with the same relentless drive as he pursues quarterbacks.
It’s this very image of a coach rolling with his players that has made it work for the Hornets, who on Saturday broke out throwback helmet decals – reading “SAC” – to go with the program’s progressive new era.
Taylor has pushed his players to be united while also being their own men, and he implores them to appreciate this game and each other. Love each other up, the coach will say, because the teams with the tightest bonds often emerge as the best. United teams are certainly the hardest ones to buckle or break, and that’s Sac State.
Choates wore the grillz because he’s got a lot of free spirit, and there’s plenty to grin about these days. A senior from Seaside, Choates and 15 other Hornets seniors endured the rigors of a lost season last fall. Sac State limped home at 2-8 amid a rash of injuries, failing to win a Big Sky Conference game.
This season has been a complete about-face. Sac State at 9-3 is a win away from tying the program’s single-season mark for victories. The 1988 Hornets went 10-3, which is also the last time the program reached the playoffs, then in Division II.
Sac State has 8-1 against Division I FCS teams this season and 5-1 at home in winning its first Big Sky championship. It is just the fifth league title for the program since it started playing football in 1954. The momentum rolled into Tuesday when the Big Sky announced 15 Hornets made the all-conference team, including seven first-teamers and the Offensive Player of the Year in quarterback Kevin Thomson. Taylor was also named Big Sky Conference Coach of the Year, and then credited everyone around him for the honor.
“We’re all having fun, and we’ve worked hard for it,” said Choates, a first-team Big Sky pick, along with fellow defensive lineman George Obinna.
The second-largest home crowd in program history – 19,882 – packed in to watch the the Causeway Classic. Sac State has a bye this weekend in the FCS playoffs as the No. 4 seed and will host Austin Peay, which on Saturday rolled Furman 42-6 in a playoff opener for the program’s first FCS postseason victory.
The Governors of of Clarksville, Tenn. are from the Ohio Valley Conference.
“I’ve been here for 42 years,” John Smith said during the Causeway Classic, “and a lot of have waited for this.”
Smith is the retired Sac State baseball coach, so revered that the field bears his name. In recent years, he has worked in the school’s athletic offices, a goodwill ambassador for all things Hornets.
Alumni have come forward to express glee with what Taylor and his staff have accomplished. Sac State has long been deemed a sleeping giant, and Taylor is the one who jarred it awake – not with facemask-grabbing tactics but with a message of unity, humility, effort and joy.
When asked during Big Sky media day in July about his expectations of the Hornets, Taylor offered a typical big-picture view.
He said then, “It’s about each day. I know that sounds trite in coach-talk, but anybody who’s really good at anything, they’re in that moment and they’re enjoying it.”
He added, “Are we going to be a great program? Are we going to win championships? Absolutely. I don’t know when that’s going to happen, but it will happen.”
It’s happening now. But will Taylor and staff bear grillz?
“I need to ask (Choates), ‘Do you have a mold?’” Taylor said.
Translation: In football, you never know.
This story was originally published November 29, 2019 at 9:54 AM.