Will Muschamp and offensive coordinator Mike Bobo have made their decision, Collin Hill will be South Carolina’s starting quarterback to start the season.

Hill, a graduate transfer from Colorado State, beat out sophomore Ryan Hilinski for the starting role. During his time at Colorado State, where he was coached by Bobo, Hill started 11 games. During his time with the Rams, he completed 263 of 433 passes with 3,323 passing yards with 23 touchdowns and 11 interceptions.

The Gamecocks are set to open the season Saturday, Sept. 26 against Tennessee in Williams Brice Stadium.

“Collin Hill will start the game against Tennessee,” Muschamp said via a released statement. “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.”