Liberty Bowl matchup with Navy has special meaning for K-State AD Gene Taylor
Long before he became the athletic director at Kansas State, Gene Taylor was a young administrator trying to break into the business of college athletics.
He started at the bottom and held a series of job titles that saw him work in ticket offices, assist coaches in many different sports and serve as commissioner of the Collegiate Sprint Football League, a 10-team conference in the Northeast that’s similar to any other college football league — except that all the players must weigh 178 pounds or fewer.
His life revolved around those duties for 15 years until North Dakota State hired him to lead its athletic department in 2001. The school he left behind: Navy.
Taylor is still remembered fondly there.
“When he left we probably had to hire three other (athletic administrators) to fill his spot,” Navy football coach Ken Niamatalolo said Monday. “He did a lot of different things.”
“Hopefully that prepared me to be a good athletic director,” Taylor said. “You could say Navy is where it all started for me.”
Taylor technically worked at SMU for one year before he accepted a job working at Navy as an assistant ticket manager in 1986, but there’s no doubt he learned the business with the Midshipmen.
For that reason, the Liberty Bowl will be a special football game for Taylor. Nearly 20 years have passed since Taylor left Navy to work for North Dakota State, Iowa and then K-State, but he still has close friends there, including Niamatalolo.
Taylor refers to former Navy athletic director Jack Lengyel as a mentor who showed him the ropes and promoted him several times until he held the title of senior associate athletic director for internal operations.
Those memories came flooding back to Taylor when Navy was announced as K-State’s opponent in the Liberty Bowl, and they have remained vivid during his time in Memphis. Taylor said he has dined with several old friends from the Naval Academy this week.
Navy wasn’t all that good at football when he worked there. The team’s only bowl appearance came at the 1996 Aloha Bowl, which the Midshipmen won against California. He thinks playing against Navy on Tuesday will be a special opportunity for K-State fans.
“For me, it is always special to play against an academy,” Taylor said. “I am familiar with what they go through as a student athlete and I can tell you it is way different than anyone else. I spent part of my career there for 15 years and still know a lot of people that work there. Ken was an assistant coach back then and it’s good to see him having so much success now.”
It seems like the folks at Navy also respect Taylor.
“The thing that I remember about Gene being here is just that he’s a good person,” Niamatalolo said. “It seemed like he did everything. It seemed like he was involved in so many things. Just a hard worker, good person. Anybody that knows Gene, nobody has a bad word to say about him ... It doesn’t surprise me of all the success he’s had, because I think everybody that’s been around him knew that he was really good at what he did.”
After leaving Navy, Taylor led North Dakota State to the Division I level and engineered the beginning of its FCS football dynasty.
Now he is about the enter his third year as K-State’s athletic director, where he is trying to build something similar with new coach Chris Klieman.
Taylor is proud of what the Wildcats accomplished during the regular season and hopes they can finish 2019 with a memorable victory over Navy at the Liberty Bowl. He knows better than most how meaningful a win like would be.
“Once those young men walk off the field as seniors they will go do some things that allow us to do what we do from a freedom perspective,” Taylor said. “They are going to become marines and pilots and naval officers. It’s just a cool thing to understand that what they do after this game is a lot different than other student-athletes.”