Where are the Taylors from?


I can't seem to recall whether this was ever clarified. We know that they moved around a lot for Eric's job, but Tami and Eric were clearly brought up in the South as evidenced by their accents, and in the pilot, Jason mentions how Eric was his coach all through growing up. So, before Eric took the job as head coach, was he a QB coach on the Panthers? Or did he just move to Dillon during his first year as head coach?

Also, unrelated but just thought to ask, did they ever say when the Panthers last won the State Championship before 2006? I have to imagine Street already had one under his belt if he was so good, and when the show started, it seemed like the Panthers were the best HS team in the state and only had a lot to prove once they lost their star QB.

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They must be originally from Dillon because Jason lived there his entire life and Eric was his coach from peewee.

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Maybe they moved to Dillon when they got married and he got his first coaching job. They would have mentioned if Taylor had been a Panther and they didn't trust him when he first was a Panther coach so he must not have been there his whole life.

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i think he was the QB coach and had left for a few years in the first season he was returning to take over from a legendary head coach that he had worked under for a number of years. im pretty sure that's how I remember it.

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That seems to work!

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You should know.

Tell us again how your high school experience was like this TV show again.

Come one tell us that bs story Dreamcatcher_Wolf
.

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How far along are you in the series? In Season 1, the show suggests (I say "suggests" because it's never perfectly clear) that Eric Taylor had only recently returned to Dillon and that he had coached Street when he was younger. It is also made clear in Season 1 that the Taylors had moved around a lot to accommodate Eric's job. What was also clear in my mind was that the Taylors were plainly NOT from Dillon. They don't seem to know anyone or have any particular roots or family there, and Julie even says at one point about not initially liking it there but growing to like it.

HOWEVER - SPOILERS FOLLOW:

In later seasons, we suddenly (and, I believe, inconsistently) learn that BOTH Tami and Coach Taylor are from Dillon and met in high school.

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yeah, I think FNL writers just did whatever the heck they wanted, lol

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If I recall correctly we never learnt anything about their parents. Where are they? Tami's siter came to stay for a while, but apart from that we never really got to know about their families

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I would love to see a prequel about Coach Taylor when he was a college QB or maybe high school. That would be a fun concept.

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They touched on this throughout the series. The Taylors are originally from Dillon. Taylor coached both Jason Street, Smash Williams, and Billy Riggins when they were younger (this was alluded to several times throughout the series) but not at the high school level. He also coached that dude (former star quarterback) that came back to Dillon looking for a job. When Tami's sister comes back to Dillon they make reference to her "return". Eric and Tami married right after high school. The same high school that they attended together. Julie obviously did not grow up there given her "new girl" status in the school (i.e very few people knew who she was at the beginning).

What might throw people off is that the writers were very inconsistent with how big Dillon actually was. It was big enough to have several radio stations, its own newspaper, large hospital (with a helicopter), multiple (large) car dealerships, yet had only one high school (two later on in the series). It had its own DMV office but only had a handful of restaurants that serviced a wide variety of people from a diverse socioeconomic spectrum.



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How is it possible that Julie apparently never lived there, yet those guys Eric coached when they were young are very close in age to Julie. It seems Coach Taylor coached Jason at an old enough age to have a huge impact on how good he was. He is like 3 years older than Julie. Smash and Tim are seniors when Julie is a sophomore. She would absolutely have memory of living there previously.

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Eric Taylor coached Jason and Smash when they were in junior high school. Three years of an age difference between kids in high school does not make much of a difference but if Julie was in elementary school when they were in middle school it is believable that she would she would not be socially aquatinted with them.

They only one that seems odd is that he also coached Billy Riggins who is at least 5 years older than Tim.

They never said that Julie hadn't lived in Dillon ... they just said that "she considered herself the new girl in town" when they moved back.

This and the actual size of Dillon were the only things that none of us could figure out.

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I get what you are saying, but it definitely still feels like it doesn't add up. She was a coach's daughter. Even at a young age those kids are popular. There was a sense in the show like no adult or kid had ever met her before. Especially the kids coached by her dad would 100% have known who she was and been around her at the time.

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Yeah, I definitely get what you're saying. Considering that the coach invited some players over to dinner (we see Tim/Billy, he was also close to Jason) and he hosts BBQs or attended previous BBQs, it makes no sense that Julie isn't far more familiar with these players.

Matt and Landry do however recognize her as the coach's daughter early on, so it's not like theres a sense that no one has ever met her before. Just that she had never mingled with these people. Which still makes no sense, because early on, she's going to football parties, which is how Matt tried to flirt with her anyways.

A rose is just a rose.

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Taylor coached both Jason Street, Smash Williams, and Billy Riggins when they were younger (this was alluded to several times throughout the series) but not at the high school level. He also coached that dude (former star quarterback) that came back to Dillon looking for a job. When Tami's sister comes back to Dillon they make reference to her "return". Eric and Tami married right after high school. The same high school that they attended together. Julie obviously did not grow up there given her "new girl" status in the school (i.e very few people knew who she was at the beginning).


Actually, if you watch the pilot again, you'll see that's not all true. If they did return to Dillon, it was prior to the premiere of the show because while Eric and Jason are being interviewed at the very start, Jason says that Coach Taylor had been QB coaching him from pee-wee, to JV and his freshmen year. So the pilot starts with Taylor getting a promotion, but not them relocating to Dillon. They've already been there.

Which is why, for the life of me, I dont get why they make Julie out to be so lost and new to this town when theyve obviously been there for a couple years. Julie even has a best friend there (who is forgotten about as the show progresses).

They also state that Eric and Tammi were a little bit older than Julie/Matt are when they got engaged, so I doubt they got married straight after HS. They would have been at least mid-way or finishing up college.

A rose is just a rose.

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They may have been in Dillon for a little while at that point but Julie's status as the "new girl in town" and her and Tami's constant referencing to moving around implies that they recently returned after a long enough absence that Julie did not have any friendships from childhood. Billy Riggins, Jason Street, and Smash Williams all mentioned that they had been coached by Eric when they were younger. As did the ex-quarter back who returned to town looking for a job.

What is obvious is that they did grow up in Dillon. Tami's sister made this clear when she referred to her visit as a return. Tami's ex-boyfriend (from high school) also mentioned this when he said he "came back" to help his home town with his donation of a helicopter.

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But how "recent" is 4 years. If Eric has coached Jason for his freshmen, JV, and current year (as referenced in the first 10 minutes of the pilot), that's about four years in Dillon. Four years is PLENTY of time to get over the new girl status. Julie would have done middle school and grade 9 in Dillon, which is enough time to form friendships.

The show was just inconsistent as hell, and it gave no sh-t about the timeline/ages/grades of these characters. Plotlines surrounding age/time were written at the convenience of whatever current storyline needed to be tailored to.

Same goes for the storyline about two highschools vs one. Theres a definite feel that the East Dillon students were never part of West Dillon (aside from Landry, Devin, Julie etc), so where the hell did these students go before East Dillon was formed? Why were they acting like there were only two high school in existence at that time, when these students had to come from somewhere. How can you fill two student bodies into one high school anyways...East Dillon was a significant part of town.


A rose is just a rose.

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I agree. The show was inconsistent.

The most frustrating thing was the actual size of Dillon. It was large enough to have two high schools, it's own newspaper, multiple radio stations, a diverse array of restaurants and bars (where even the local celebrities would not get recognized), a large hospital with it's own helicopter... yet it was always portrayed as a one horse town.



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Re-watching the series again and in Season 2, Tami's ex-boyfriend from high school comes to Dillon as a real estate developer and he mentions Tami was queen of Rankin High School, Class of 1980.

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They never specified how many high schools they actually had in Dillon. If we are to believe that there was only one active one (West Dillon ) and then they re-opened East Dillon they never explained where all of those ghetto kids went to while East Dillon was shut Down. This (along with the actual size of Dillon) was a giant plot hole in my opinion.

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How was the actual size of Dillon a plot hole? It was never presented as a tiny town, considering that so many of the characters hadn't really crossed paths until the first season.

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The size alone isn't the plot hole. It may not have been presented as a "tiny" town but several references were made to it being small. It was never referred to as a city (of any size). This is a point of angst with several of the characters. It's all of the other things (when you factor in the size) that are the discrepancies.

1) How many high schools did they have? They obviously had at least two towards the end of the series (East and West Dillon) but they never explained where the ghetto kids from East Dillon went to school prior to the school being reopened. They didn't go to West Dillon because the coach and the West Dillon refugees did not know anyone there. The necessity of having a mailbox to facilitate a school boundary (even when one of the schools was closed) would suggest that it was still an issue that needed resolving.

2) The town is large enough to have it's own daily newspaper and at least 3 local radio stations and at least one television station (that broadcasts the high school football game every Friday night) but a car salesman with one small lot seems to wield quite a bit of financial and political clout with both the school board and the mayor's office.

3) The town has it's own DMV office.

4) The town has a large hospital (complete with helicopter) yet only has a small one precinct police force.

5) There seem to be only a handful of restaurants that cater to a wide socioeconomic demographic.

6) High School athletes are big enough celebrities that they get preferential treatment at certain establishment (i.e - the cinema) but someone like Tim Riggins (who is on a first name basis with the mayor) can pull off presenting himself as an Iraqi war vet in order to drink underage.

7) Dillon seems to have more post-secondary education facilities than high schools. At least two are mentioned in the series... Dillon Tech and that community college some of the kids went to after graduating.

I don't mean to be pedantic about this but it was something that always bothered me.

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Re-watching the series again and in Season 2, Tami's ex-boyfriend from high school comes to Dillon as a real estate developer and he mentions Tami was queen of Rankin High School, Class of 1980.

"MO" (played by Peter Berg himself) does state to the crowd before the hero/helo ride that he is a 3rd generation Dillonite. They must have met in Dillon because 'What the hell is Rankin?' The only Rankin I'm aware of is Kevin Rankin, the guy that plays Herc.

This was season 2 with the writer's strike and production issues with NBC so the storylines are all over the place anyway. Possibly why this season ranks lowest by most everybody on here. Although some of the storylines were still interesting. Interesting enough to keep me watching. I liked the murder thing with Tyra and Landry and we got to meet that tasty Carlotta!

I think that they did the High School thing together then went to College, got married then his work took them to other places before they came back to Dillon.

Regarding the first season when a lot of people seemed to be meeting for the first time. More for our benefit than theirs.

K/H D

If there's a way to screw something up, the "O'Commie regime" will find it EVERY SINGLE TIME!! Only 121 more days left!

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