'They don't know me': Why Kamario Taylor says he's sticking with Mississippi State

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  Alex ScarboroughSep 30, 2026, 06:45 AM ET

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  • Covers the SEC.
  • Joined ESPN in 2012.
  • Graduate of Auburn University.

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Kamario Taylor first chose Mississippi State when he was still an under-the-radar recruit halfway through his junior season at nearby Noxubee County High School in 2023.

He chose Mississippi State again, months later, when the head coach he committed to, Zach Arnett, was fired after a 5-7 season. He didn't know how the new staff would view him, but his uncle told him to sit tight and see how it played out. But he was always looking for a reason to stay, and that reason showed up when Jeff Lebby visited Taylor's high school the same week he took the head job. Even though the Bulldogs went 2-10 that next season, Taylor showed up for every home game. Even as his stock soared from a top-50 to top-10 quarterback prospect and he picked up serious offers from the likes of Georgia and Texas A&M, he never wavered.

He chose Mississippi State once more after his freshman year of college this past January. It wasn't easy, sitting behind the starter, sixth-year senior Blake Shapen, for much of the season. He didn't understand why he had to wait his turn. Other schools were coming on strong through back channels as the transfer portal was getting ready to open in early January. His performance in relief of Shapen, including starts in the final two games of the season, caught the attention of personnel offices, and offers to sign were approaching $4 million, sources said. He ignored them.

He keeps choosing Mississippi State, over and over again. He writes "283 BABY" on his eye black, a nod to his hometown Baptist Hill Community (B is the second letter in the alphabet, H the eighth, C the third). He looks into the camera and tells in-state recruits to stay home and help him build a contender. But as his star continues to rise, throwing an FBS-best 14 touchdowns while leading the Bulldogs to a 4-0 start, the college football world doesn't seem to believe him. Either that or they imagine they know best. They're envisioning him chasing a payday that could reach $7 million or more -- perhaps from a quarterback-hungry team like Miami that has snatched other programs' homegrown products before.

But, what people get wrong, Taylor told ESPN, is, "They don't know me."

"They don't know the type of person I am," he said. "My mom always told me that once you start something, you have to finish it."

He and his coach tune out the transfer talk. His uncle, former Mississippi State quarterback Omarr Conner, and some people inside the athletic department are growing increasingly frustrated by it, though. "I hear it all day," Conner said. But it's out of their hands. Taylor has become a case study. If Mississippi State can't hold onto a player like him, one with such deep roots in the community and a longstanding relationship with the football program, then will any schools outside of the financial elite ever be able to keep a generational player home?

On ESPN's "College GameDay," six-time national-championship-winning coach Nick Saban has used borderline messianic terms to describe Taylor earlier this season. "He's the truth and the light," Saban said -- more than once. Taylor's mom sent him that clip. "That's the GOAT," Taylor said.

But then, last week, Saban said the quiet part out loud.

"If I was coaching right now, I'd be trying to get Kamario Taylor to get into the portal."

SIX-FOOT-4, 230-pound quarterbacks with big, strong hands, a cannon for an arm and the ability to run like a deer don't stay hidden for long. A high-level talent evaluator who has worked with multiple NFL quarterbacks got to see Taylor before he stepped into the starting role, and was immediately bought in.

"I have not ever experienced anything like this physically from a college player," he said. "I think when God decided to make a quarterback, Kamario Taylor is what he drew up."

He's a big play waiting to happen. Look at last Saturday's game against Missouri when he threw a 43-yard touchdown to Sanfrisco Magee to take a 7-0 lead early in the first quarter. After the Bulldogs hit a lull in the second and third quarters, Taylor struck again. Trailing by seven in the fourth, Taylor got rolled up by a defender and was moving gingerly in the pocket. But he ran to convert a third-and-1 and then a fourth-and-1 to set up the game-tying touchdown from running back Fluff Bothwell. Then, with 4:41 left, he threw a 48-yard strike down the sideline to Anthony Evans III. Two plays later, he fit the ball perfectly between a pair of defenders on a skinny post to Magee for a 24-yard, game-winning touchdown.

After the game, Taylor was asked about Saban's portal comments.

"If you know me, you know I bleed maroon and white," he told reporters.

Lebby knows him, it's why he doesn't engage with the never-ending speculation about Taylor's future.

"You know why?" Lebby said. "Because I don't have Twitter. ... I really don't see s---. It's clean living."

So it's football and football alone that Lebby deals with. And the football part is going pretty great right now.

No one expected much from Mississippi State this season. A preseason poll predicted a 15th-place finish in a conference of 16 teams. Exactly one Bulldog made preseason All-SEC on offense or defense, and it was cornerback Kelley Jones, not Taylor.

Now, with an improving offensive line and some key additions throughout the roster, the Bulldogs are undefeated, ranked No. 16 and holders of the No. 4-ranked offense in college football.

Up next: No. 7 Alabama at home on Saturday (noon ET, ABC).

"Obviously, with 1, you don't have to be perfect," said Lebby, referring to Taylor's number. "You can overcome some things when you got a guy like that."

Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Wommack said Taylor's the best quarterback he'll have faced since getting to Tuscaloosa three years ago.

Lebby still remembers his first visit to Noxubee County High School to see a then-16-year-old Taylor.

"He was a small-town Mississippi kid that was just this crazy talent that loved Mississippi State," he recalled.

Lebby used the word "elite" a handful of times to describe Taylor's character before he ever got to his physical traits -- like, say, clocking 20.12 miles per hour on GPS tracking. That's wide receiver or running back speed.

Defensive end Amaree Williams bet Taylor after practice one day that he couldn't hit the goalpost crossbar. Taylor took a knee at the 50-yard line. Williams chided him, "You can't even make it to the end zone."

Ding!

"It's just ..." Williams said, struggling to find the words. "It's insane."

Williams shook his head as he walked away.

"Heisman!" he shouted over his shoulder. "He's going to win the Heisman!"

Taylor, who has thrown for the 10th-most yards in the FBS while completing 69.2% of his passes, currently has the third-best odds to win the award, according to DraftKings. Two players are ahead of him: wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, who is in his third year starting at Ohio State, and quarterback Darian Mensah, who is on his third program after going from Tulane to Duke to Miami.

How Taylor has been able to succeed so quickly goes back to when he enrolled. Lebby saw in a January quarterback meeting that Taylor could lock in and retain information.

"Very, very, very rare, especially with the background where he comes from, being a three-sport star," Lebby said. "I was like, 'Oh s---, this is different.'"

Lebby knew then that they could fast-track Taylor but kept things slow.

"The way we were built in the offensive line last year, if that guy goes and starts seven games, it ain't good," he said. "One, he's going to get the hell beat out of him. Two, he's going to create a ton of bad memories. And you start getting those skeletons at the quarterback position, it ain't good."

Taylor went 0-2 in two starts as a freshman, but there was a lot to build from. Lebby and his staff worked through his fundamentals this offseason, connecting his upper and lower body and keeping his eyes in the right places while on the move.

"He doesn't even look like he's trying," Lebby said, describing Taylor's scrambling ability with something approaching reverence in his voice. "He's got incredible spatial awareness. And this dude has great football instincts."

And, Lebby said, "I'm not worried a bit" that Taylor will leave.

For the record, sources say that Taylor's deal with Mississippi State ranks among the top half in earnings among SEC quarterbacks this season and is a very healthy figure considering he's a QB in his first year as a full-time starter. A source brought up where someone reported Taylor as making $1.5 million and said, "Not so fast." It's higher. "They stepped up," the source said of Mississippi State.

Maybe more important, though, was the money spent in the portal to build out Taylor's supporting cast, in particular at wide receiver and along the offensive line. Zion Ragins and Marquis Johnson came over from Oklahoma and Missouri, respectively, and they've combined for four touchdown catches so far.

"He's going to be able to do everything he could ever want to do right here," Lebby said. "I truly believe that, and he knows that. And for him, it's about having the ability to chase all of those things that we want to go accomplish at Mississippi State, 25 minutes from his front door, and I think he understands what that's going to do for him, the 40-year-old version of him, and how this state will give back in an incredible way and truly be a legacy player."

And Taylor knows exactly what it looks like to build a legacy here. He witnessed it firsthand in 2014 when Dak Prescott led Mississippi State to No. 1 in the polls.

"He's chasing it right now to go do it again," Lebby said.

A Power 4 head coach said he wasn't surprised to see Taylor skyrocket to fame this season. His staff recruited him out of high school. But, as he lamented, "With the Mississippi State connection, there's no way it was going to happen for us."

CHARLIE WINFIELD LAUGHS off the transfer talk now, but wasn't always in a joking mood about Mississippi State's NIL funding. Four years ago, the MSU alumnus and lawyer was watching his Bulldogs lose a close basketball game to archrival Ole Miss. He got so mad he threw his phone into the fireplace.

"What's your problem?" his wife asked.

"Unless somebody does something, we're never going to win again," he answered.

"Well," his wife told him. "What are you doing?"

The next morning Winfield decided to act.

"I woke up and started our NIL collective," he said.

He did his part to get fundraising going. But the bulk of credit, he said, goes to the hiring of Zac Selmon as athletic director and his ability to connect with the fanbase and donors and get them to understand the resources needed to compete. Mississippi State has had record fundraising in each of the past three years.

There's a misconception, he explained, that Mississippi State is wanting. Just because it's a land-grant university and the second-smallest school in the SEC in total enrollment, just because a lot of their alumni wear jeans and boots instead of slacks and penny loafers, doesn't mean they lack money.

"We are way, way more competitive than people want to believe," Winfield said. "You know, it becomes an easy trope to just assume that Mississippi State doesn't have the resources. ... [I]t's just completely false."

Speaking to several sources inside and outside the program, there wasn't a single person who cited any friction or disappointment in the way negotiations with the quarterback have been handled to this point. Taylor isn't clamoring for marketing opportunities or trying to insinuate leverage to renegotiate in-season (which happens). One source described it this way: "Every single conversation with this kid, with his representatives, with his family, has always started with, 'We ain't ever leaving here. Now let's talk.'"

"This wasn't winning a recruiting battle when a kid was 18 years old," Winfield said. "This was a kid falling in love with a place when he was 2 years old. And because of that, he's just one of us."

But how aggressive is Mississippi State prepared to be in order to retain him? A source inside the program gave a succinct answer: "Highly."

"It's not a situation where we've got to have a bake sale to make Kamario Taylor happy at Mississippi State," Winfield said. "We're invested."

Austin Golding is part of a group of donors that makes that investment possible. He went to school at Mississippi State where he competed in track and field. Today, he works for his family's company, Golding Barge Line, in Vicksburg. For 40 years, the Goldings have been giving to the university. Last year, they made a $2.5 million contribution to athletics.

"I haven't had a call on me that said, 'Hey we need special help for this,'" he said. "I feel like this is within our normal scope of operation."

Read that again: normal.

"We embrace that mentality and enjoy being underestimated. Mississippi State fans kind of look at each other and have a wink and a nod," he said. "But in the back of everybody's mind here, we're looking at a fan base that has Josh Hubbard still playing basketball here. We had Ace Reese. We have Kelley Jones that's still playing football here."

Mississippi State fans have been hearing about Hubbard leaving ever since he dropped 34 points on Kentucky as a freshman in 2024.

"There's something beyond money that keeps people at Mississippi State," Golding said, "and it's the passion that people have for this place."

Golding sees Taylor as a potential once-in-a-lifetime superstar to come through the state.

"Mississippi loves underdogs," he said. "We love people that come here and are loyal to Mississippi and rep Mississippi because, I mean, we're a state that is starved for progress and notoriety. And when this shines a light on our state and shows everybody the type of people that we have among us here, it's just a hell of a lot of pride when he stays home and helps lift us all up with him."

You can almost hear Golding shake his head over the phone.

"I mean, this is the green grass," he said. "It's not greener anywhere else."

TAYLOR JUST SMILES. Leave here? Why?

Where else can he get all of this?

Take the South Carolina game earlier this month, for example. Despite it being a battle of two unranked teams at the time, there were a lot of eyeballs on Taylor and the Bulldogs. Beating Louisiana Monroe and Minnesota to start out the season was nice, but how would they fare against SEC competition on the road? It was a rocky start, to be sure. Taylor threw an early interception as the Gamecocks took a commanding 16-0 lead. Williams-Brice Stadium roared while Taylor patted his chest on the sideline. "That's on me," he told his receivers. Then he went to work. Four touchdown passes later, including a 43-yard bomb and a ridiculous 23-yard off-platform throw across his body, Mississippi State won 41-34, and Taylor cemented his status as arguably the most exciting player in college football.

Not 24 hours later, he hopped in his car and left the football facility in Starkville. Thirty minutes after that, he was home. He got to check in on his young niece. He thought about going fishing, but his little brothers wanted to play catch. So they went outside. He played quarterback while they took turns going one-on-one as receiver and DB in the front yard.

It's surreal, Taylor said, going from a national stage in front of 77,000-plus screaming fans to the quiet of his mother's front yard where the only thing pestering you is the whine and bite of the mosquitos. From everyone watching to no one. From chaos to peace and quiet.

"That's the advantage of having home close by where you can go and get away from everything and just be yourself," he said.

A home-cooked meal. A mother's embrace. The little things, the creature comforts of home, mean something.

"That lets you know that you're still human," Taylor said. "Because a lot of people start to treat you like you're not, like you're not yourself anymore, and you're not a regular person. They try to treat you like you're bigger than what you really are. So it's just good for you to have that type of humanity still going on around you. Like just easily go back home and feel the love, the support, and just being back in your natural habitat."

Whenever a stranger slides into Taylor's DMs asking for something, he screenshots it and sends it to Conner. Almost always, it gets sent to the trash. Conner gets contacted by would-be agents, would-be marketers, would-be hangers-on all the time. Taylor has been represented by CAA since his freshman year, and a big reason why the powerhouse agency got a foot in the door so early is because the agent knew Conner from when he played at State and had a connection with several of his teammates.

"I don't let them get close to us or to me," Conner said. "At the end of the day, you have to be where your feet are. And Kamario loves Mississippi State.

"He's got good people around him. We have a village, and we have a wall around him."

Taylor's mom calls him a gentle giant. Conner calls him a big kid. He is still only 19 years old. They want to preserve the innocence at the heart of those descriptions. Because the football stuff is hard enough. Layer on the pressure of contracts and marketing and everything that comes from looking ahead to next year and the year after that, and the weight of it all could be too much.

They're trying to keep as much of that kid intact who started going to Mississippi State games so early that he can't even remember his first one. The kid who wears a "Spongebob SquarePants" backpack and whose idea of a fun night is playing video games and watching Marvel movies.

"He's a yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am," Conner said. "He's the type of person to give you the shirt off his back. Like he doesn't have a selfish bone in his body. I'm telling you, I will be hurt if Kamario doesn't live out his dream because I failed him."

Everything Taylor needs is right here, Conner believes. There's a connection, he said, to where they come from. Baptist Hill is full of hardworking people, and they see that same mentality in Starkville.

It may feel small to someone from, say, North Palm Beach, Florida. That's where Williams grew into the standout defensive end he is today. He spent his first two years in Tallahassee at Florida State where there's plenty to do. Moving to campus in Starkville was a shock. "I look up Target. There's no Target," Williams said. "What do you mean there's no Best Buy?!" At least there are two Wal-Marts now. They got their first standalone Starbucks a few years ago.

But to Taylor, Starkville is plenty big enough. In fact, it feels like a grown-up city compared to Baptist Hill and Macon. Conner described home this way: "We don't have green light, red light. We just have stop signs." It's a place without a national chain grocer where kids play football under the street lights and play basketball on dirt courts. The population, 2,400, is one-tenth that of Starkville. Taylor trained in Los Angeles this offseason, but he doesn't talk longingly of the bright lights and never-ending strip malls.

Here, his life can be small. That's how he likes it.

"You can't find a better situation," he said. "Like you got everything you want right down the road from your hometown."

He doesn't want to get away. In fact, he feels bad for people who can't get home.

He says he has never thought about playing anywhere else.

"Never in a million years," he said to put a fine point on it.

And what about all the speculation otherwise? A recent story in The Athletic quoted an unnamed Big Ten coach as saying, "He's gonna look awesome in a [Miami] Hurricanes uniform next year."

"I just ignore it," Taylor said. "Honestly, I just try to live in the moment. This morning, I said a prayer. I was like, 'God, allow me to be where my feet are.' That's all. That's what I'm going to continue to do. Be where I am day in, day out. Just come in with the right mindset. Come in with the mindset to approach this thing the right way and go take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself to us."

THERE'S NO CRYSTAL ball in Starkville -- or Miami or Los Angeles for that matter. No one knows what's next for Taylor and the Bulldogs. All there is here is optimism that they're closer to the beginning of their journey together than the end.

All there is here is the old-fashioned belief that a man does what he says.

Taylor has chosen Mississippi State every time, and there's no evidence yet to believe that will change.

Things are changing, though. Every day after he drinks a Gatorade, he shoots the empty bottle into the garbage and shouts, "KD!" as it goes in. Recently, Taylor walked into Lebby's office to tell him that NBA superstar Kevin Durant texted him a show of support.

Prescott reached out to Selmon for Taylor's number and calls himself a fan. The two texted recently and Taylor asked about how he breaks down film and what he looks for from certain types of coverages.

Could a more well-resourced school make him a ridiculous offer in a few months? Sure. There were programs ready to pay Ty Simpson $6.5 million to put the NFL draft on hold and transfer from Alabama last offseason. And with all due respect to Simpson and his talented right arm, Taylor is a more dynamic prospect.

There's a world where some tough decisions will be made. But sources caution that money in the short term isn't the only factor at play. "He wants to go 1-1," a source close to Taylor said, alluding to the NFL draft and being the first overall pick. Fernando Mendoza, the No. 1 selection in April's draft, signed a contract worth $57.27 million.

Ultimately, the choice will come down to comfort. Not just how much Taylor likes being so close to home, but how comfortable he is with the outlook in 2027 in terms of the team's competitiveness and the talent around him. The good news for Mississippi State is that it projects to return 10 starters on offense.

The here and now is plenty of fun on its own, though. It's the most exciting player in college football emerging before our very eyes. It's a team that wants to shock the world like it did a decade ago when another transformative quarterback put Starkville on the map.

NIL and the transfer portal are facts of life in today's game. But once the ball kicks off on Saturday against Alabama, a football game will be played and for a few hours nothing else will matter.

Taylor will be exactly where his feet are, and we'll have to wait and see where they take him.