Lionel Taylor, former NMHU and Denver Broncos star, dies at 89

Aug.

14Lionel Taylor wasn't exceptionally fast.

He was big enough, tall enough, but not physically imposing.His first college and pro football coaches, in fact, weren't initially sure he was a wide receiver at all.But boy, was he.Taylor, a three-sport star at New Mexico Highlands University in the 1950s who went on to a prolific career as a wide receiver with the Denver Broncos, died on Aug.

6 in Rio Rancho.

He was 89.A disciplined route runner blessed with strong, yet soft hands, Taylor caught 567 passes as a pro, all but 24 of those for the Broncos.

In his first two seasons with the team, in the American Football League era, he caught 192 passes an even 100 in 1961.

He was the first professional football player to reach the century mark in pass receptions in a single seasonHe was inducted into the Broncos' Ring of Fame in 1984, the fourth person to be so honored, later to be joined by former New Mexico State quarterback Charley Johnson and former University of New Mexico defensive lineman Paul Smith.Taylor went on to a nearly 30-year career as a coach in the NFL, the college ranks and the World League of American Football/NFL Europe.Born in Kansas City, Missouri but brought up in West Virginia, Taylor came to New Mexico Highlands in Las Vegas, New Mexico in 1954 he once said in an interview with $13 in his pocket by the time he arrived.Cowboys coach Don Gibson, noting that the young Taylor sported a roll of baby fat, tried him at defensive tackle, linebacker, fullback and halfback before deciding that, yes, catching passes was what he did best.

He was named first-team All-Frontier Conference and earned Little All-America honorable mention as a senior in 1957.At any position and in any sport, Taylor 6-foot-2, 215 pounds was a marvelous athlete.

He averaged 20-plus points for the Cowboys in basketball, once scored 44 points for an AAU team called the Las Vegas Whizzards, and Gibson believed he had the talent to play in the NBA one day.As a track athlete, Taylor had a remarkable day at the 1956 Frontier Conference Championships: first place in the long jump, second place in the discus, third in the shot put.

He also ran a leg on the mile relay team and sometimes threw the javelin.In any and all sports, "He came to play," Gibson recalled in a 1966 interview with the Las Vegas Daily Optic.

"When he walked out there, he was ready to go and he loved to win."Taylor was team-oriented from the get-go, Gibson added: "He was the kind of player that would carry water out in the morning and get to play in the afternoon."After spending a year as an assistant to Gibson at Highlands, Taylor signed with the NFL's Chicago Bears.

The Bears, too, weren't sure where to play him, and he never caught a pass for Chicago before being waived.He was playing semipro football in Bakersfield, California, when the Broncos of the fledgling, barely solvent American Football League offered him a tryout as a defensive back.He was playing a game of touch football after practice, Albuquerque Journal sports editor LeRoy Bearman wrote in 1970, when Broncos quarterback Frank Tripucka saw him make catch after catch.

That fall, in 1960, he caught 92 passes.Taylor retired after the 1968 season, his final two years spent with the Houston Oilers.

He coached in the NFL as an assistant with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Los Angeles Rams, and the Cleveland Browns.He coached in the college ranks at Oregon State as an assistant and as the head coach at Texas Southern in Houston (1984-88).

Taylor was interviewed for the head-coaching job at NMHU in '84 but turned it down in favor of Texas Southern.

He then accepted the Highlands job in 1989 but resigned after only two weeks to take a job with the Browns saying he needed to do so to qualify for full NFL retirement benefits.After coaching five years with the London franchise in the World League of American Football/NFL Europe, Taylor returned to New Mexico.

His wife, Lorencita, who survives him with their daughters Bunny Taylor and Loretta Taylor, is a native of Cochiti Pueblo.Taylor was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame 1970 and into the New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame in 2006.That three-day bus trip from West Virginia to Las Vegas 52 years before, he said on the occasion of his induction into the NMSHOF, changed his life."I got out here and liked it," he said, "and met good people."Clearly, so did they..

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