Kenny Trill and the lingering lessons of the Week One overreaction

Please don't try to make too much out of just one game on the college football calendar

It only took so long after Deion Sanders and Colorado completed a stunning 45-42 win last Saturday against TCU – a game in which the Buffaloes were a 21-point underdog to the defending national runners-up – for the chatter to begin.

After an offseason of modest, perhaps even pessimistic predictions about how it might fare in its first season under the 56-year-old man who insists on being called “Coach Prime”, Colorado showed that it might be better than previously thought. For some, it went several steps further. In the days after the Buffaloes’ victory, they became one of the top 25 betting favorites to win the College Football Playoff, Sanders was compared to Nick Saban and it was declared that Sanders, one game into his FBS coaching career, will reinvent the business and operation of college football.

It wasn’t exactly unexpected. Week One of the college football season is a crucible for takes and grand, overarching proclamations. After waiting feverishly for eight months, there’s a pressure and demand to make sense of what unfolded in the first game and what it might mean for the rest of the season. 

The problem, of course, is that it’s just one data point, which can often skew and distort what ultimately becomes reality. Oftentimes, that limited sample is predictive of little, if anything.

We’ve seen countless examples over the years of just how hilariously wrong some of us can be when trying to evaluate the college football landscape after a single week. Chip Kelly was an out-of-his-depth small-college coach ill-equipped to run a major program after Oregon lost to Boise State in his first game as the Ducks’ coach in 2009 (they went on to win the then-Pac-10 and play in the Rose Bowl). Houston was destined for a College Football Playoff appearance after beating a top-five Oklahoma team to open the 2016 season (the Cougars went on to lose to Navy, SMU, Memphis and San Diego State that year). And who could ever forget ESPN’s Joe Tessitore excitedly declaring “TEXAS IS BACK!” after the Longhorns beat a top-10 Notre Dame team in overtime in 2016? (Texas finished 5-7, fired coach Charlie Strong and, seven years later, is still not back)

More than any of those things, though, I think of Kenny Hill.

How a legend is a born

The summer of 2014 can feel like a distant, bygone time. 

Barack Obama wasn’t even halfway through his second term as president while Donald Trump was still known primarily as a bombastic reality TV host. Elizabeth Holmes began gracing magazine covers for fawning profiles. Iggy Azalea, a white girl from Australia whose musical style could generously be described as “verbal blackface”, dominated the charts.

When using events and figures to help define that summer and contextualize how much time has passed since, Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, S.C. on Aug. 28 isn’t a bad place to turn.

It was the night the college football world as a whole was introduced to Kenny Hill.

Hill was playing in his first college game for Texas A&M after committing to the Aggies as a four-star quarterback recruit out of Southlake Carroll High School in suburban Dallas, where he led his team to a Class 5A Division I state championship as a junior in 2011. He spent his first season in College Station backing up reigning Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel and after Manziel left for the NFL after the 2013 season, Hill was picked as his successor.

The question of how Texas A&M would fare without Manziel was quickly answered – or at least that’s what we thought at the time.

Facing off against No. 9 South Carolina, which was coming off three straight 11-win seasons, Hill was revelatory. The sophomore was surgical and dazzling while picking apart the Gamecocks, throwing for 511 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions on 44-of-60 passing in a 52-28 rout. His passing yardage and completion totals are still school single-game records.

The Aggies had just lost one of the most impactful players in program history, but in their first game without him, his absence wasn’t felt. The lead to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s game story from that night said as much:

Johnny who? At Texas A&M, it is now quarterback Kenny Hill’s world.

The paper was hardly the only outlet to express such a previously unthinkable belief. If anything, it became the mainstream sentiment.

Texas A&M leapt from No. 21 to No. 9 in the Associated Press poll after the win. Hill, a relative afterthought heading into the season, shot near the top of Heisman rankings.

Soon enough, Hill got something any budding legend needs – a catchy, distinct nickname. “Kenny Football” had been suggested by none other than Manziel – playing off his “Johnny Football” moniker – but Hill didn’t care for it. “King of the Hill”, a reference to the Texas-based animated sitcom, was suggested and appeared frequently in newspaper headlines following the South Carolina win. 

But when asked by reporters the following week which suggested nickname he liked the best, he responded with “Kenny Trill”, which replaced his last name with a word that’s a combination of true and real that was popularized by Port Arthur, Texas hip-hop duo UGK. It not only stuck, but resonated, so much so that Bun B, one half of UGK, tweeted his support of it while adding that “one good game alone doesn’t make you trill.”

It was the next step in a resounding transformation for Texas A&M, a school and football program known mostly for stolen valor and cornballs in overalls doing cringe-inducing open mic night comedy routines. Between the afterglow of Manziel’s eventful and party-filled tenure, coach Kevin Sumlin’s confident demeanor and his “Swagcopter” that would give him a grand entrance to any high-school field he visited for a game, and a worthy successor at quarterback with a nickname tying him to one of the state’s defining musical acts, the Aggies were suddenly one of the coolest programs in college football.

The hype and hysteria surrounding Hill didn’t end that day in South Carolina. Over Texas A&M’s next four games – wins over Lamar, SMU, Rice and a rebuilding Arkansas program – he threw for 1,234 yards (an average of 308.5 per game), 14 touchdowns and two interceptions. At 5-0, the Aggies got as high as No. 6 in the AP poll.

Hill’s improbable rise, though, came with just as rapid of a descent.

Texas A&M dropped its next three games, losing to Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Alabama, each of which was ranked in the top 15 at the time of the matchup. Hill still put up gaudy raw passing numbers against the two Mississippi schools, but he averaged just 6.6 yards per attempt and his team fell by a combined 32 points in the contests.

The 59-0 loss to the Crimson Tide on Oct. 18 represented a nadir, the moment when any remaining mystique surrounding Kenny Trill was suffocated. Hill was held to 138 yards on 26 attempts, tossed an interception and failed to throw a touchdown pass in a game for the first time all season. Across the three losses, he had as many interceptions (six) as touchdowns. His team wasn’t just losing, but it was getting throttled – and he was at least part of the reason why.

By that point, even his breakout performance against South Carolina was being devalued. On their way to a 7-6 finish that season, their fewest wins in five years, the Gamecocks allowed 35 points per game against their 10 Power Five opponents. Hill’s cartoonish numbers still stood, but they no longer seemed quite as special.

With Texas A&M at 5-3 and unranked, Hill was benched and suspended for two games for the dreaded unspecified violation of team rules.

"It's always disappointing whenever it's any player," Sumlin said at the time. "What we try to do is hold players to certain standards in this program and if you don't meet those standards, there are consequences. Unfortunately, this is one of those times."

The two games were more than just a temporary setback. Even once he was eligible to return, Kyle Allen remained the Aggies’ starter for the rest of the season. In Jan. 2015, four months after the season-opening win at South Carolina, Hill was granted his release from the program and was gone just as soon as he had loudly arrived.

Is there life after the fairy tale ends?

Hill was too talented and enticing of a player for his story to end there.

He transferred to TCU and after sitting out the 2015 season in compliance with what were NCAA transfer rules at the time, he was named the Horned Frogs’ starter for 2016. He endured a disappointing first season in Fort Worth, throwing 17 touchdowns and 13 interceptions for a 6-7 team, but rebounded in 2017 to end his college career on something resembling a high note, completing 67.3% of his passes for 23 touchdowns and eight interceptions as TCU went 11-3 and rose as high as No. 4 in the AP poll.

"He's been a professional ever since he's been here," Horned Frogs coach Gary Patterson told ESPN in 2016. "He's done everything right."

After going undrafted by the NFL in 2018, Hill signed with the Oakland Raiders, but was cut in late June. He then signed with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League, but that stop was short-lived, as well.

By the start of the 2018 season, he was back at TCU, where he served as a student assistant before rising up the ranks, from graduate assistant to offensive analyst to quarterbacks coach over a period of three years.

“I loved it,” Hill told the Star-Telegram after his first season on staff. “It was everything I kind of hoped it’d be.”

Hill left TCU after the 2021 season, which would be Patterson’s last after 23 years at the school. He spent last season at Cal as an offensive quality control coach before being hired in January as the associate head coach/running backs coach at Incarnate Word, an FCS program in San Antonio. His page on the athletic department’s website doesn’t have a biography, though there is an email address listed where you can reach him.

By his own admission, Hill’s football life didn’t unfold the way he thought it would. As he told Sports Illustrated in 2017, he figured he’d get to Texas A&M, back up Manziel for a year, start for two years and then bolt for the NFL, where his dreams awaited. 

Of course, it didn’t transpire so neatly. Hill experienced the whiplash of fame while seldom getting the chance to revel in its benefits. 

He’d be hounded around College Station for autographs and pictures, but was forbidden by Sumlin from engaging after Manziel landed in NCAA trouble for doing the same. When Hill and his parents filed for a trademark on “Kenny Trill” to prevent others from capitalizing off of the rising star, they were criticized for being overly eager and opportunistic. The day he told reporters about his preference for “Kenny Trill”, he got a notification on his phone from ESPN about the development. He’d read over his Twitter notifications and Instagram comments to soak in the praise when things were going well, but continued to do so when his game and his team’s fortunes went south.

"You go from Heisman talk to, dog, you're a joke," Hill told ESPN in 2016.

Throughout it all, lessons were learned.

“I would tell myself not to worry so much about going to parties and getting out and meeting all these people,” Hill said to Sports Illustrated in 2017. “I wouldn’t worry about all that stuff. I’d worry about making sure I did my laundry all the time. I would have no clothes. It’s little stupid stuff that you take for granted, but it’s stuff that I think would have been a lot better for me to be doing at the time.”

The “September Heisman” is a well-established trope, a land where Geno Smith, Denard Robinson, Seneca Wallace and, yes, Hill are cloaked forever in the sort of gridiron glory they never quite achieved. It’s a bit of a joke, sure, but also a reminder that the college football regular season is three months, not one.

While I can’t speak for others who dwell on such things, I don’t reference all of this to be a “Well, actually” guy who enthusiastically tosses a wet blanket on something undeniably cool. Whether it’s in college football or elsewhere, appreciate greatness in the moment, even if you have your doubts about how sustainable it is.

But if it doesn’t last, just know that someone else has to live forever with whatever comes from that painfully short-lived success.