This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Judging by the response when BYU quarterback Tanner Mangum took the field for the first time this season at LaVell Edwards Stadium, Cougar followers are ready to move on from the Taysom Hill era.
That's both understandable and unfair, considering everything Hill went through in five seasons in Provo.
Two weeks after Mangum's first pass of 2016 vs. Southern Utah, Hill's BYU career ended last Saturday with an elbow injury vs. Utah State. So the Mangum era will resume in the Dec. 21 Poinsettia Bowl, launching him into his remaining two seasons in the program. That's a healthy development for the Cougars, in one sense, but nobody should look ahead without a glance back of appreciation for Hill's career.
I'll always think of Stanford coach David Shaw's comment to me about recruiting Hill out of Pocatello, Idaho: "Watching Taysom was just fun."
And here's the background: Shaw, who was Jim Harbaugh's offensive coordinator during Hill's senior year of high school in 2008, was talking about everything that goes into evaluating quarterbacks. College coaches try to judge every aspect of their techniques and how their skills project to that level. Yet as Shaw said, Hill's game was just different. "He played with energy and excitement," Shaw recalled. "You watched him play basketball, and he played with the same energy and fire."
Same story at BYU, although watching Hill at times was as frustrating as it was fun. He never developed into an accurate passer, which explains the fascination about Mangum's return to the job he filled when Hill was injured in 2015.
Even so, when you think about the most memorable players in BYU history, Hill has to rank high on the list. In the summer of 2012, accompanying a story about the 40th season of the BYU passing offense, I ranked every QB who had thrown in a pass in that era. My top 10: 1, Jim McMahon. 2, Ty Detmer. 3, Steve Young. 4, Robbie Bosco. 5, Max Hall. 6, Marc Wilson. 7, Steve Sarkisian. 8, John Beck. 9, Gifford Nielsen. 10, Gary Sheide.
Finding the proper spot for Hill now becomes tricky. Judged strictly as a passer, he shouldn't make the top 10. But there's so much more to his story. His 23-10 record as a starter is actually better than it looks, because nearly half of his starts came against Power 5 opponents — unlike any of the other QBs' challenges. He went 8-8 in those games, notably beating Texas twice.
Hill also lost twice to Utah and was beaten by Washington in his only bowl game. Yet with nearly 10,000 yards of total offense, a figure he probably would have reached with one more game, his overall production has to place him somewhere in the middle of that top 10. I'll say No. 7.
Coincidentally or not, that's the number he wore in 2016, which brings me to a couple of checkpoints in covering Hill's career. I'll always remember going to Pocatello in October 2014, researching a story that got deferred — because Hill was injured two days later against Utah State, ending his season.
And then when Dexter Hill died in March, I attended the funeral service in Pocatello, recognizing how playing to honor his brother would frame Taysom's 2016 season.
The year did not go perfectly for Hill, who deserved some of the blame for each of BYU's four losses and had some frustrating moments even during those eight wins. Through it all, he was fun to watch. The clutch plays he made at Michigan State and Cincinnati will stick with me, and even the last play of his career was vintage Taysom — trying to leap over USU safety Gaje Ferguson and partially succeeding, only to land hard on his left elbow.
And that's how it ended, sadly enough for him. Yet that kind of effort — his "energy and fire," in Shaw's words — should resonate, whenever Taysom Hill's BYU legacy is discussed.
Twitter: @tribkurt