Collin Hill is a newcomer to the USC football program, but he’s no stranger to Mike Bobo’s offense. USC’s new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach recruited Hill out of Dorman High School to Colorado State and coached him there thru an injury plagued four seasons. Hill joined the Gamecocks in January and went head to head with returning starter Ryan Hilinski for the starting job in camp. Today Will Muschamp announced Hill will be the starting quarterback a week from Saturday night when the Gamecocks open the season at home against Tennessee.
“I thought both guys had outstanding training camps,” Muschamp said in a release from USC. “We can win with both guys, bottom line. Ryan’s had a really good camp. Obviously, there was an advantage for Collin playing for Coach (Mike) Bobo before. Schematically there are some things that helped him. But we can win with both guys. We’ve got confidence in both guys and, as I told them and our entire football team, we’re going into the unknown. We’ve got to have all hands on deck ready to play. Luke Doty has gotten more reps at the quarterback position, because what if we do lose Collin and Ryan to a COVID situation? We’ve got to have a bunch of guys ready to play in the game, but Collin will start for us.
“It was a very difficult decision,” continued the head coach. “You look at our three scrimmages, which are the three benchmarks really in the evaluation. Ryan was the player of the day in the first one; Collin was in the second. Both of them played extremely well in the third. It was very difficult, a hard decision, but that’s the decision that we made. As I’ve said before, we can win with both guys. We have great confidence in both guys and both guys know that.”
The 6-4, 222 pound Hill played in 18 games at Colorado State including 11 starts during his career while battling through three ACL injuries. In Fort Collins he completed 263-of-433 passes for 3,323 yards with 23 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He has five career 300-yard passing games.
Muschamp talked with USC’s Steve Fink after Thursday’s practice
