How Notre Dame WR target Tayln Taylor evaluates distance with differing visits on the docket
Talyn Taylor’s mother tested the Notre Dame 2025 wide receiver target’s ability to live outside the Midwest when he was a teenager. Taylor’s mother, Venus Taylor, is a softball coach with over two decades of professional experience.
For most of Talyn’s life, his mom coached collegiate softball in Illinois. She led the programs at Judson University in Elgin from 2011-18 and then at her current position at North Central College in Naperville, beginning in 2021. However, from 2019-20, the former Western Illinois softball player standout returned to the Division I ranks. Charleston Southern University in South Carolina hired her as head coach.
As a result, Talyn, a seventh grader then, followed her to Charleston. It was a tough change of scenery for the now four-star college football recruit. And it gave him a taste of what it was like to play on southern turf.
“I didn’t really like it out there,” Taylor admitted to Blue & Gold during a stop at Geneva (Ill.) Community School on Sept. 1. “Sports was good. But I mean, I was in seventh grade playing up against ninth graders because they didn’t have a middle school team. That was hard (and at the same time), it wasn’t really.
“But I didn’t really like it out there. … I’ve always been used to home.”
For now, Taylor’s two years spent in the South is a winding memory. But that does not mean it will become a roadblock in his college football recruitment … or at least it has not so far.
The 6-foot-1, 165-pounder ranks as the No. 71 overall player and No. 12 wide receiver in the 2025 cycle per the On3 Industry Ranking. He has 20 Power Five scholarship offers. Among them are three from the SEC: Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.
So far, Taylor, the On3 Industry Ranking’s No. 1 Illinois prospect, has only been in SEC country twice — both to Georgia — on college recruiting visits. He’s also visited Notre Dame the same number of times. Over the next two weeks, he’ll return to each respective school for a game day visit.
Taylor will visit Georgia when they host South Carolina next Saturday before returning to Notre Dame for the Ohio State game on Sept. 23.
Georgia and Notre Dame are two schools to watch for Taylor
Georgia and Notre Dame being the only two schools on Taylor’s game-day visit docket is not a coincidence. Those two programs have contacted him the most since Aug. 1. That day, college coaches could begin reaching out to 2025 recruits permissibly. And they have not held back from talking to Taylor.
“I actually hear a lot from (wide receivers) Coach B-Mac (Bryan McClendon) from Georgia,” Taylor said. “I hear a lot from Notre Dame — coaches, recruiting coordinators, all that stuff. Notre Dame, Illinois, I head a lot from. UCLA and USC.”
Irish wide receivers coach Chansi Stuckey has spearheaded Taylor’s Notre Dame recruitment since he offered him on March 17. That offer came on Pot of Gold Day, ND’s St. Patrick’s Day-themed recruiting event that featured 64 other 2025 recruits reporting new scholarship offers.
During last spring’s NCAA recruiting evaluation period, Stuckey visited Taylor twice at his high school. Irish head coach Marcus Freeman and director of recruiting Chad Bowden have also accompanied Stuckey by being in frequent phone contact. They have all shared with Taylor a relatively straightforward message.
“Notre Dame’s pitch is that they want me really bad,” he said. “They said they’re set focused on me. They said I am probably the No. 1 recruit they talk to all the time.”
The Irish reciprocated that theme on his most recent visit, which took place July 30 for the program’s “grill & chill” recruiting event on July 30.
“I feel the love,” he said. “I feel it when I’m there and when I’m not there.”
Other schools besides Notre Dame, Georgia lurking in Taylor’s recruitment
In addition to Notre Dame, Taylor said he thinks UCLA, Georgia and USC have prioritized him on their recruiting board. He’s also been in touch with Kansas State, Kansas and Alabama during August.
Taylor has not visited those three schools. However, he has also been to Wisconsin (5), Iowa (3), Michigan State (3), Illinois (2), Michigan (2) and Minnesota. Taylor specifically mentioned his weekly contact with Wolverines wide receivers coach Ron Bellamy.
Although most of Taylor’s past college visits have taken place in the Midwest, he is not building boundaries around the region when it comes to his recruitment.
“I want to play where I can make it to the NFL,” he said. “All the schools can do that, but whatever can help me best develop as a player, man and get me to the NFL, that’s where I want to go.”
Taylor realizes that football has a shelf life, putting additional factors into play when choosing a college sometime before his senior season.
“Academics for sure,” he said. “I want to go somewhere that I can get a degree that can carry life outside of football because football is not going to be forever. That’s when that degree comes in. The coaching staff and players definitely have a big (role) in that because I’m gonna be with them a lot.”
Whether that ends up being at Notre Dame or elsewhere, Taylor has always been a Midwestern kid at heart.
“I’ve always loved it here,” he said.
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