MKRob Sports

When Joe Taylor took over as the football coach at Florida A&M, barely a month after the Rattlers lost six of their last seven games to finish 3-8 in 2007, he summoned every returning player for an individual conference.

In each session, he asked the same question: why did things happen the way they did last season? And each player pointed the finger at someone else. Not one acknowledged any role.

“There was a whole lot of what I call deflecting,” Taylor, 59, said in recent interview.

Taylor said that he realized that the job facing him was more than returning Florida A&M to its customary success. He had to oversee a character makeover, which for him meant a regimen of churchgoing, class work and off-season training.

As he said, “My whole idea is that if you can improve the person, you can improve the player.”

Less than two years later, the results vindicate the thesis. Taylor’s 2008 team went 9-3, and after last Saturday’s 31-28 overtime victory against Morgan State, the Rattlers were 6-2 in 2009, with one of those losses to Miami.

Florida A&M now ranks in the top 25 in the N.C.A.A. Football Championship Subdivision poll for the first time in eight years. Before Saturday’s home game against North Carolina A&T, the No. 24 Rattlers were in second place in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and third in the Sheridan Broadcasting System ranking of historically black colleges.

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