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‘It for sure feels special’: Bryson Barnes reflects on time at Utah as he prepares to face the Utes

Utah quarterback Bryson Barnes runs during the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., on Saturday, Jan. 1, 2022. The former Ute could be under center for Utah State when the Utes and Aggies meet in Logan on Saturday. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

This article was first published in the Ute Insiders newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Wednesday night.

By the time “College GameDay” rolled into town last October, Bryson Barnes had become something of a folk hero in Salt Lake City.

Hailing from Milford, Utah, where he grew up on a pig farm, Barnes starred on the gridiron for tiny Milford High, his 137 career touchdowns throws standing atop the UHSAA record books and his 11,525 career passing yards still ranking second in Utah high school football history.

His eye-popping stats, though, came against 1A competition, and as a result, Barnes was underrecruited out of high school, choosing to walk on at Utah, the school he grew up cheering for.

From the moment he arrived on campus in the foothills of Salt Lake City, Barnes knew that he’d have to earn everything and that nothing would be handed to him. For much of his time at Utah, he didn’t have a scholarship, paying his own way through school, and ahead of the 2021 season, Barnes was fighting an uphill battle to get playing time.

The Milford High quarterback was behind not just Charlie Brewer, who began the year as Utah’s starter before transferring midseason, and Cam Rising, who took over as the starting quarterback three games into the year, but other highly-recruited quarterbacks like Peter Costelli and Ja’Quinden Jackson.

But Barnes kept working and grinding away, and when Rising suffered a concussion early in the fourth quarter of the 2022 Rose Bowl against Ohio State, most thought it would be Jackson, who was listed as Rising’s backup…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/sure-feels-special-bryson-barnes-030000232.html

Author : Deseret News

Publish date : 2024-09-13 03:00:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.

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