What Does It Take To Retain A Superstar QB? Mississippi State Is About To Find Out

It took just a flick of the wrist to silence the sea of white towels gyrating throughout Williams-Brice Stadium.

Ranging to his left, big-bodied Mississippi State signal-caller Kamario Taylor whipped his right arm back across his body, past an outstretched rusher’s hand and flung a dart toward the front left corner of the end zone.

There, it was greeted by receiver Marquis Johnson, who tapped his toes for Taylor’s third of four passing touchdowns in the Bulldogs’ comeback victory over South Carolina last Saturday.

"Holy shit!" exclaimed an excitable fan in the maroon and white-clad corner of the stands.

"Never a doubt!" another shouted.

But as Taylor’s prolific evening and his dismantling of Minnesota on the road the week before cascaded across the sport’s lexicon, the Mississippi-born quarterback became the center of a broader conversation percolating inside programs nationwide.

College football is in a time of mass transition. Cash is flooding into the sport at an exorbitant rate. Capitol Hill is attempting to wrangle an ecosystem it feels has operated without hard and fast rules. Collective bargaining is on the tip of almost every administrator’s tongue.

That cash flow, however, has pushed the sport into a new age, one where brand biases of the past are only as accurate as a program’s current checkbook. Ole Miss has suddenly become an SEC favorite. Indiana — yes, Indiana — is the defending national champion.

But pre-NIL notions have conditioned the collective college football consciousness to disbelieve what their eyes might tell them. 

In a world where recruiting currency has shifted from locker room waterfalls to dollars, prognosticating the future plans of quarterbacks outside the traditional blue bloods has become popular fodder. The assumption, now more than ever, is that there are perpetual wandering eyes from those starring under-center. 

Taylor — a lifelong Mississippi State fan who attended games throughout the Bulldogs’ 2-10 campaign during his senior year of high school in nearby Macon, Miss. — has been no exception to that presumption.

"Kamario Taylor is unreal," ESPN personality Booger McFarland posted on X during MSU’s romp of Minnesota on Sept. 13. "Let’s hope that they can keep him at Mississippi [State]."

That perception, however, hasn't necessarily matched reality in Starkville.

"In this era, people seemingly have offers every day," Mississippi State athletics director Zac Selmon told me. "What I've been really pleased with, especially when you look at the sport of football, we've been able to retain all the players that we've wanted to retain through Coach [Jeff] Lebby."

Balancing the present and future

The player acquisition market has grown exponentially since the advent of NIL in 2021, while the desire for talented passers has touched the highest ends of that nexus.

Learfield, college sports’ leading multimedia rights provider, released its annual report in July that showed more than $300 million in sponsorship revenue was tied to deals that included NIL assets last year — a jump from over $140 million the year prior.

The marketing firm Pivotal Sports and Entertainment, which counts around 75% of its business in the collegiate space, also shared internal research with me that determined six of the ten most marketable players in college football this year are quarterbacks: 1) Trinidad Chambliss; 2) Arch Manning; 3) Mensah; 5) Moore, 7) Lincoln Keinholz; 9) Leavitt; and 10) Demond Williams Jr.

That tracks.

On3 reported in August that 14 different quarterbacks — names like Darian Mensah (Miami), Josh Hoover (Indiana), Drew Mestemaker (Oklahoma State) and Marcel Reed (Texas A&M) — were making in the neighborhood of $3 million or north of it.

There are, however, tiers to this discussion. 

Nebraska’s Anthony Colandrea (UNLV), reportedly making around $2.5 million this year, was an obvious import option coming off a productive campaign in the Group of Five. Mestemaker (North Texas) and Auburn’s Byrum Brown (South Florida), meanwhile, followed their head coaches to bigger jobs.

The question that has been thrust on Taylor and his camp in recent days is more on par with the moves of Sam Leavitt, Hoover and Mensah, and whether a move to another Power Four program is justified despite the Bulldogs' obvious on-field momentum.

That rub has created its own challenge for coaches balancing their needs under center. How do you focus on the season at hand, while knowing decisions need to be made now regarding next year’s roster?

"You're constantly thinking about roster management and how to best situate your team for the short-term and long-term," said South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer, who retained quarterback LaNorris Sellers each of the last two offseasons. "... When you have great players that are great people, great teammates, and embody what we want, you want to do everything in your power to keep them around and get them coming back into your program."

"It's a different challenge at Tulane than at Florida," quipped Gators head coach Jon Sumrall, who signed Mensah out of high school. "Tulane, middle of the year, I knew, ‘Hey, probably going to lose Darian,’ because our best offer was going to be a small fraction of what other people's best offers were going to be. Here at Florida, if you’ve got a returning starter that you feel good about, you should be able to keep them because we have enough resources to do so."

Where frustration belies college football fans — and those in Starkville, in particular, since the South Carolina win — is what the sport’s broader hivemind has forgotten: Some kids are, in fact, content where their feet are planted when the ties run deep.

Noxubee County High School — where Taylor attended school — is exactly what you’d picture a small-town Mississippi high school to be.

The 3A school tucked in the northeast corner of Mississippi blares smooth jazz from its in-house speakers before kickoff on fall Friday nights, while its bleachers, roughly 15 rows high on either sideline, are often packed to the brim.

Its football tradition? That’s more significant.

Ex-Bulldogs quarterback Omarr Conner – Taylor’s uncle — torched defenses here during his youth. As did All-Pro defensive tackle Jeffrey Simmons and a handful of other eventual NFL prospects throughout the years.

Taylor was pegged as the next star to don the Tiger red and blue before trekking the 29 miles up U.S. 45 Alternate to Mississippi State for the next step in his career.

As October neared November during Taylor’s senior season, he called his uncle and told him he was ready to commit to Mississippi State. He just needed a graphic made. 

Conner took on the task and passed the finished product along, assuming Taylor would hold off for a few days — or at least until after his game that week. 

He didn’t, delivering the news a few weeks before Halloween.

"It’s just a testament to his hard work, a testament to Coach Lebby and a testament to the summer grind," Conner told me of Taylor’s early success this fall. "... I always knew Kamario was going to have the season he’s having. I knew he was going to pop off."

‘You have something to sell’

The wounds were still fresh.

Just days after Mississippi State was throttled at home by Toledo in 2024, a donor texted Selmon asking to meet at his office for a late-night, state of the program powwow.

Selmon agreed to link up around 6 p.m., but not without a quick pit stop to pick up a bottle of Blanton’s, his soon-arriving guest's bourbon of choice.

Over a glass of Kentucky’s finest, one hour turned into three. By the time the pair exited the office, the donor — who wished to remain anonymous — pledged $8 million to help fix the football program.

"I always joke with him about it," Selmon told me. "But that really kind of jump-started it where other people started getting on board and saying, ‘Hey, instead of pointing to what a problem is, we know resources are a big issue, so let's just let's get on it.’"

Mississippi State — like Indiana, or Ole Miss, or any number of programs that have punched above their weight in the NIL era — fights the stigma of the past and perceptions of lacking resources to compete in modern college football. 

While the Bulldogs program faced an on-field downturn following the sudden death of Mike Leach, it hasn’t been for lack of funding. The Athletic reported last week the school was spending in the neighborhood of $25-30 million on its football roster this year.

Mississippi State has also seen a massive uptick in fundraising since Selmon took over in 2023. Just last year, it reported more than $59 million in direct donor contributions, per the Knight Newhouse College Athletics Database — good for seventh among public SEC schools and ahead of places like Georgia, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Arkansas and South Carolina.

Selmon and his staff have procured more seven-figure donations in the last two years than the previous 25 years combined.

"Now that we're better, people are assuming, ‘Well, they still don't have any money. They're just good because of this one kid (Taylor), and he'll leave next year,’" longtime Mississippi radio host and prominent Bulldogs podcaster Brian Hadad told me. "People are pissed [about the Taylor discourse], because State fans are slowly coming around that State's portal problems weren't money related.

"If somebody offers you $5 million and says they're going to go 5-7 and somebody can offer you $5 million and say, ‘We're going to go 9-3 or 10-2 and go to the Playoff,’ where are you going to go? That was State's problem. Next year, [State] has money and you have something to sell."

That Taylor will stick with Mississippi State this offseason, of course, is no guarantee – though sources in and around Starkville are adamant he’s not going anywhere. Nor is it certain the Bulldogs will capitalize off their 3-0 start that has fans dreaming of 2014 — the year Dak Prescott's squad earned the first No. 1 ranking of the College Football Playoff era.

But as Taylor’s name gains increased acclaim, it’s worth remembering in college football’s new-look world, not every talented signal-caller is one hyped season away from a departure.

"I think we're going to be able to do just fine from a retention standpoint," Lebby said on this week’s SEC teleconference. "Right now, man, it's about winning on Saturday."