Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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WHERE HAVE YOU GONE? in me," he said. "I needed some direc- tion, and once she kicked me out of the house because I was out all night doing things a 14-year-old shouldn't be do- ing, it was a wake-up call." Five days later after living with some friends, Taylor returned home with de- fined dreams academically and athleti- cally. "She asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I want to play pro football," Taylor said. "That night there was a story on TV about the school across the Bay in Concord, Calif. — De La Salle." It was one of the nation's elite prep football superpowers. "Fortuitous things happened from there," Taylor said. "Mom found a job there and knew a lady right down the street from the school with a house for rent. … All this crazy stuff in the uni- verse just opened up. Then I started to find out the harder I worked, the better I got." A consensus high school All-America, Taylor in 1992-93 became the 16th — and still most recent — two-time con- sensus All-American in Notre Dame history, first at guard and then tackle. Those Irish teams won 17 consecutive games, beat 12-0 and 10-1 Texas A&M outfits in the Cotton Bowl, and in 1993 he was the recipient of the Lombardi Award as the nation's best down line- man. The first-round draft pick went on to earn millions in the NFL, managed his money wisely and even started every game at guard for the 1996 Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers. Knee problems finally ended his football ca- reer at the turn of the century, which led to his first stint in television, with ABC. BEYOND THE GLORY At age 28 Taylor was a retired mil- lionaire, a renowned champion, a home owner with zero debt … and completely unfulfilled internally. "It was 15 minutes of fame that I didn't necessarily want, and after time, it was money that I didn't need," said Taylor of the two-year contract he signed with ABC. Although the network liked his work and wanted him full time that included a move to Bristol, Conn., Taylor walked away. He donated his entire salary in his second year to create the Aaron Tay- lor Impact Fund. The charity is third- party audited and managed through the San Diego Foundation. Studies have shown that a majority of retired professional athletes are ei- ther divorced, bankrupt or involved in substance abuse shortly after stepping down from their glamour stage. For Taylor, the first two were not issues as a single man with accrued wealth, but … "I had battled depression and anxiety and was using negative coping strate- gies of drinking large quantities of tasty, frosty beverages," he said candidly. "The lowest common denominator of what was going wrong in all the situa- tions of my life was me. "That set about the process of self dis- covery, humility, being honest with my- self and looking in the mirror. "I went through a mid-life crisis at the end of my 20s and was forced to answer the question much earlier than I wanted to of 'Who am I, what do I want and what am I about?'"