Collin Hill’s journey continues at USC. He passed on chance to leave football behind
When Dorman High School coach Dave Gutshall called Collin Hill during the 2019 football season, it wasn’t to ask about the next steps of the quarterback’s football career. It was to offer his former starting passer a job.
The response the coach got says a lot about why the former Colorado State quarterback is currently at South Carolina.
“When he got hurt the last time, I offered him a coaching job here at the high school,” Gutshall said. “He said, ‘No coach. I’m coming back.’ So he’s got that determination that he’s going to do it.
“He has had to climb over a lot of obstacles.”
At the time of the offer, Hill was coming off tearing his ACL for a third time. Gutshall, who remembers Hill as a rec league player dreaming of playing for the Dorman Cavaliers, thinks his former star could’ve had a magical career and potentially already be plying his trade in the NFL.
But life doesn’t always work that way.
He could only help his Rams team for less than three full games last season. That played a part in his coach, the coach who pulled him out of the Upstate despite a late run of Power 5 offers, getting fired. It meant a chance for a new beginning, which it turned out came with old faces. He’s now part of a migration from out west, coach Mike Bobo coming to Columbia, bringing along another coach (Joe Cox), a quarterback in Hill and a hardworking fullback in Adam Prentice.
“I knew change was coming,” Hill said of the transition at his old school. “I met with the coach out there and just kind of knew that it was time for me to move on. I wasn’t sure what that was going to look like.”
Hill sets a standard at Dorman
When Bobo and coach Will Muschamp reached out, there wasn’t much of a wait to decide.
“They asked if I wanted to come on a visit,” Hill said. “Do I need to see anything? I was like, ‘No, I’m good. As long as the offense, we’re doing similar stuff, I’m ready to come back home.’”
The Hill family made it out to Fort Collins, Colorado for just about every game, Gutshall pointed said. Hill’s father had always been a supportive, ideal sports parent, and now it will only be a drive of 90 or so minutes to see their son.
Hill’s legacy in Columbia is yet to be written, but he left his mark in Dorman, a place where high-level success is the norm.
Gutshall has won 410 games in his career, 258 at Dorman. His teams won a pair of titles and played for six more. But in the middle of this decade, he found himself discussing an unofficial “Collin Hill rule.”
“If you’re gonna play quarterback here, you’ve got to get to school early so you can meet with coach Gutshall,” the coach said. “Collin Hill sort of set the standard.”
Gutshall usually arrived at school around 7 a.m., an hour and 20 minute ahead of the start of class. For two seasons Hill was a starting quarterback, and across that span Gutshall couldn’t recall a time he arrived and Hill wasn’t sitting in the parking lot waiting to watch film.
Hill spent his first two seasons playing behind first Trey Robinson, who played at Furman and got a shot with the New York Giants, and then Grayland Fowler (Gutshall wondered if maybe he should’ve started the sophomore). As Hill took over, the team made a jump from 13 wins across two seasons to a 10-3 record in his junior campaign. He threw for 3,304 yards, 31 touchdowns and only four interceptions.
That only set up his senior season. The Cavaliers lost three games in the regular season, but got revenge for two of those in the postseason, upending Dutch Fork in the quarterfinals and rival Byrnes in the state semis. Gutshall still remembers Hill breaking off a few runs in that latter game, including one to seal the win. (Dorman went on to lose to Fort Dorchester, led by current Gamecocks receiver Dakereon Joyner.)
Hill threw for more than 3,500 yards and 35 touchdowns, and after leading South Carolina to a Shrine Bowl win, he faced a choice. Bobo while at Georgia had been on him hard, but after five-star Jacob Eason picked the Bulldogs, Hill went with the Rams in the spring of his junior year (Bobo had just been hired there from UGA).
But his own late push led to some bigger interest.
“He had some other big offers right at the right at the last second,” Gutshall said. “I think he was determined he was gonna go with Coach Bobo at that time”
The Gamecocks were one of those offers, as Muschamp had just arrived and needed to add to his QB depth. Auburn was also looking at him hard.
At USC, Hill’s the new guy and a veteran at the same time
Four years in Fort Collins featured a few false starts. Hill got into the lineup as a freshman, but a knee injury sidelined him after five games and another knocked him out for the next year. He spent the start of his third year behind a Washington transfer, eventually moving into the lineup and playing out a 3-9 season.
He made it into his third game last fall before another knee injury ended things.
And now he has a new opportunity. He worked himself into a strong position in the quarterback competition in the offseason.
He got strong reviews from a range of teammates and coaches. Tight end Nick Muse described him as having an NFL arm and marveled at how he came back from the injuries. (Muse is at the tail end of his own ACL rehab.)
Hill is in an unusual place. He’s joining a team as an elder statesman and a newcomer at he same time. He wasn’t even at practices in the spring because of his rehab, but he offers the promise of a steady player who can get the ball to his playmakers. And perhaps he’s settling into a role of leadership in a way.
“Respect, first of all, is earned through what kind of player you are,” Muschamp said. “And the guy’s a good football player. He plays the quarterback position, he can make all the throws. So that’s number one where you command respect, and then it goes back to the second part of that is the kind of person you are, and they see the kind of guy he is, what he’s been through.”
For the moment, the team isn’t divulging any edge in the QB battle. The Gamecocks had a partial scrimmage on Saturday, and another is scheduled a few weeks after. Those scenarios are usually where passers start to separate themselves.
But in that spot, Gutshall just sees a competitor relentless in his approach. He said when Hill finished high school he was the best QB he had ever seen, and when he leaves South Carolina, he’ll be his best self because of that drive.
Had things gone a bit different, Hill would’ve been up early to meet with Kurt Roper in 2016, trying to beat out the likes of Perry Orth and Brandon McIlwain, with Jake Bentley a likely a year away from arriving (had South Carolina added two freshman QBs, Bentley very likely would not have enrolled a year early).
Instead, he’s competing with Ryan Hilinski and Luke Doty, Elite 11 passers at or near the starts of their college football journeys. He’s already a factor in the QB race, and the man who was given a picture of Hill as that 10-year-old rec player thinks he could be more than that.
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” Gutshall said. “He’s probably the best quarterback at South Carolina. I think he’s one of best quarterbacks in the country.”
