'Wyoming Wildman' Ready for His Next Football Frontier
Wednesday, August 12, 2015 | Football, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The image has been kicked around in the Florida coaches office.
One day, a Gators assistant coach has joked, someone will be rolling through the wide-open West and come across a state or county fair, where a carnival barker will be funneling folks into a tent under a big sign that says, “Man Wrestles Bear.”
Inside, Taven Bryan will be locked up with a grizzly.
If you're not familiar with the name, Bryan is UF's 6-foot-5, 300-pound redshirt freshman defensive tackle and the first player in school history (or so it is believed) from the state of Wyoming.
Hence the moniker, “The Wyoming Wild Man.”
“He's just a different dude,” sophomore cornerback Quincy Wilson said.
“Athletic freak,” said senior offensive lineman Trip Thurman.
“Crazy strong and doesn't even really know it yet,” junior safety and roommate Keanu Neal said. “He's like a baby when it comes to football right now because he's still learning the game. But he's definitely going to be a good player ... and he's definitely a wild man.”
Let's start with his roots back in Wyoming, aka “The Cowboy State.” Like anywhere, it's produced a share of great athletes. Bryan's hometown of Casper (population 56,000), the state's second-largest city, can claim former MLB ace Tom Browning (who once pitched a perfect game), two-time World Series champion Mike Devereaux, plus current Jacksonville Jaguars offensive lineman Zane Beadles.
But not exactly names from the sports culture mainstream, right?
“C'mon now, the greatest athletes in the world come from Wyoming,” Bryan shot back in defense of his state before being asked to recite a who's-who list of superstars from his state. “Rulon Gardner!”
Olympic gold-medal wrestler. Good one.
OK, who else?
“Some baseball player,” he added, before coming up with Mike Lansing (formerly of the Montreal Expos), but forgetting Pro-Bowler and two-time Super Bowl champion defensive end Brett Keisel (Pittsburgh Steelers). “I'm not very good with names.”
Maybe not, but there's a very good chance that Bryan's name soon will be rolling off the tongues of Gators fans as easily as Jonathan Bullard, Alex McCalister, Joey Ivie, Caleb Brantley and Bryan Cox, Jr. That quintet pitched in some valuable snaps for the nation's 15th-ranked defense last season, and now Bryan -- on the heels of a sensational spring, followed by an eye-opening offseason on the strength and conditioning front -- will figure prominently in the front's rotation. His time mostly will be spent inside at tackle, but Bryan will have plenty of chances to flash his speed with reps at defensive end, as well.
Yes, he has speed. And a lot more.
Taven Bryan body-slams an opponent in a high school wrestling match during his days at Casper (Wyo.) Natrona County High. Below, Taven in Midget football uniform and on a hike with his father and friends. [Photos provided by Brandy Bryan]
In addition to winning a pair of state football championships, Bryan ran the 100-yard dash on his high school track team, while throwing the shot and discus. He was an all-state wrestler. He played baseball as a kid, even toyed around with basketball some when he first dunked as a ninth-grader.
Years before that, Bryan was backpacking Wyoming's rolling sagebrush plains, taking 12,000-foot hikes into the Laramie Mountain Range, fishing North Platte River and hunting elk and antelope.
Oh, and working.
“He's been swinging a 16-pound sledgehammer, breaking concrete and moving concrete since he was 9,” Brandy Bryan said. “That's hard work. I trained him.”
Did he ever.
Before Brandy Bryan, Taven's father, was a city fireman and operated his construction business on the side, he was a Navy Seal. One of the motto's of the Seal's Warrior Creed is to “Earn your trident everyday.”
That's why Taven, as well older sister Chelcey, were busting concrete and working construction until it was time to leave home.
“My kids all had to work. No free rides,” Brandy said. “I told both my kids that they had to get a job, join the military or get a scholarship to go to college because I wasn't paying for it. That's one of the problems with the world today; too many people think something is owed them. I made my kids earn what they got.” 
The Bryan family work ethic allowed Taven to swell into the finest athlete in Wyoming. It wasn't long before some of the top schools in the Pac-12, Big 12 and Southeastern Conference were calling, despite the fact the coaches at Natrona County High played Bryan fewer than 10 plays on defense his junior year.
The day former offensive coordinator Brent Pease swung through Casper on his recruiting duties the school just happened to be staging its annual team fitness games and Pease sent then-Gators coach Will Muschamp a cell phone video of the 275-pound Bryan running (and winning) the 400 meters.
He was offered a scholarship on the spot.
When Bryan made his visit to Gainesville, Muschamp and his staff gave the prospect his choice of playing offensive line, defensive line or tight end.
“I wanna play defense.”
Bryan signed in February 2014, redshirted last season and did all the right things in introducing himself to Jim McElwain and the new UF staff in '15.
Now the Florida coaches want to see how a kid used to playing football in front of 900 can do it in front of 90,000. Plus, they tend to grow a little bigger in the SEC than in Wyoming.
Not that the Gators are worried about Bryan on that front. 
“I'm sure they expect me to play well and get my assignments down,” said Bryan, adding that he has embraced defensive line coach Chris Rumph's emphasis on becoming more of a student of the game. “He's talked to me about not having great football knowledge, so I'm working on that. What am I supposed to be doing? Where should I be? What are the people behind me doing? Just watching the offense and getting more of the basics down.”
The rest of it -- the athleticism, the desire, the intangibles -- that's already there.
“He's a specimen,” Thurman said. “And he's competitive too. I know Coach Rumph calls him 'The Wyoming Wild Man,” and he definitely is. He sometimes seems like a quiet guy, but when you're around him enough he'll show his true colors.”
In a month or so, those colors will be orange and blue and sprinting (really fast) from the tunnel at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in the season opener against New Mexico.
Aggies beware.
Bears also.
