COLUMBIA — Tennessee will kick off the 2020 season in nine days at South Carolina.
South Carolina announced Thursday that its starting quarterback will be graduate transfer Collin Hill.
Hill transferred to South Carolina from Colorado State, reuniting with Mike Bobo. Bobo was hired in the offseason as South Carolina’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach after serving as Colorado State’s head coach from 2015-19.
“Collin Hill will start the game against Tennessee,” South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp said. “I thought both guys had outstanding training camps. 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.”
