Red alert: super-sharp Alex Smith, a Heisman candidate with smarts to match his skills, is leading Utah on a historic march

When he was playing football at Helix High School near San Diego, quarterback Alex Smith was nobody's idea of a Heisman Trophy candidate. He was a brilliant student, yes, but too skinny and overshadowed by a teammate named Reggie Bush. So, all this Heisman talk now? "It's overwhelming," Smith says.

That's funny. So is he.

As the quarterback for one of the most exciting teams in the nation, Smith has Utah on the doorstep of the BCS party, and no team from outside the power conferences has gotten inside. His combination of passing and running has helped him master the second-highest scoring offense in the nation--one that makes use of everything from the option to the 2-minute drill with five wide receivers. He is putting up the kind of numbers that eluded him in high school, when Bush, now a star at Southern California, was bulldozing opponents, and Smith seldom had to pass.

"Once he got his opportunity," Utes wideout Paris Warren says, "he exploded."

Although Smith was stuck behind two other quarterbacks as recently as two years ago and nearly left the program, he now is 19-1 as Utah's starter and boasts a stack of statistics that compare favorably with other quarterbacks being considered for the Heisman (see chart).

What happened? Smith--whose only other scholarship offer came from Louisville, where his uncle John L. Smith (now at Michigan State) was coach--used an uncommon intellect to transform himself into a player who could understand every nuance of the complex offense coach Urban Meyer brought to the Utes two years ago.

"He puts a lot into what he's doing, whether it's in the classroom or on the field," freshman quarterback Brian Johnson says. "He prepares for the game so well. He's in there watching film, every day, constantly."

Smith always has possessed a certain focus. It allowed him to amass so many advanced-placement credits in high school that he arrived at Utah with a grade-point average far surpassing the usual maximum 4.0. He graduated in two years with a degree in economics and is working on a master's degree now--in addition to the Utes' perfect season.

"The thing I remember about Alex as a little boy, all the way up, was the ability to focus," says Pam Smith, his mother. "If he's reading a book or if he's watching something, he's just ..."

"Some people call it stubborn," chimes in Doug Smith, his father.

Whatever word you use, that trait has worked wonders for Smith. He has perfected his throwing motion to improve his passing efficiency, added 15 pounds of muscle through weightlifting in the offseason and improved his quickness and agility enough that he can run option plays every bit as as well as he can fire rockets to his talented receivers.

"He's the best quarterback I've ever been around," Meyer says.

Perhaps the most involved, too. Smith is so bright that he typically spends time with the coaches in their game-plan meetings, helping to decide what to try and what to avoid.

"I don't think there's any part of the game plan that goes through if he hasn't really given it approval," quarterbacks coach Dan Mullen says.

Though he arrived at Utah eager to learn, Smith nearly left the program after a disastrous debut in 2002.

The Utes were mired in a losing streak under former coach Ron McBride, and Smith had not played and expected to redshirt. But with the Utes getting blown out at San Diego State in the sixth game of the season, McBride threw Smith into the game, ill-prepared. He took only a handful of snaps, was sacked twice and left the game after throwing an interception that was returned for a touchdown.

The Utes lost, McBride was fired, and Smith seriously considered transferring.

But Smith liked Utah and his teammates well enough and was willing to give Meyer a chance.

"Urban did come down and meet with us very early on," Pam Smith says. "He, in fact, apologized to us for what had happened. He said, 'You know, I had nothing to do with it; it's just absolutely ... it's a terrible thing.' And he just told us that, you know, things would be different."

Nobody could have known just how different they would be. Smith still wasn't the starter at the beginning of last season, but he inherited the job when Brett Elliott dived for the goal line on a 2-point conversion attempt at the end of a game at Texas A&M, broke his wrist and unwittingly ceded his starting position forever.

When Smith made his first start the next week while fighting an excruciating back injury after four days to prepare for a nationally televised game against California in front of the largest crowd ever to watch a football game in Salt Lake City? No problem. Using a scaled-back version of the offense to suit his lack of experience, Smith directed two scoring drives in the fourth quarter that lifted the Utes to a 31-24 victory.

"Things just started to make sense to me as far as this offense," Smith says. "That was a big step."