At the end of a film session about two weeks ago, Mark Helfrich handed redshirt junior and preferred walk-on Taylor Alie a Muhammad Ali quote to read aloud to his team:
“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it.”
Alie told the team what the quote meant to him, then turned back to Helfrich, who told Alie he would be joining the ranks of the players on scholarship.
“It was definitely surreal,” Alie said of that moment. “There’s pretty much no other way to describe it other than that.”
Alie is now a scholarship player on the hometown team he had watched as a kid. A Eugene native, he played quarterback for Sheldon High School and helped lead the Irish to a state title in 2012.
Coming out of high school, Alie wasn’t a highly sought after recruit. He had three offers to play football in college. Two of those were for preferred walk-on positions at Oregon and Washington State, and the other was an offer from a Division III school that couldn’t offer him a scholarship.
When the time came for Alie to choose, the decision wasn’t all that difficult.
As Alie enters his junior year at Oregon, putting on a Duck jersey is now a natural thing. But it wasn’t always like that.
At first, Alie was “a little awestruck” about being a Duck. He went from watching games in the stands as a kid to running out of the tunnel, looking up at the crowd.
“It was quite the experience,” Alie said.
Alie has come a long way in his tenure at Oregon. As a true freshman in fall 2013 he served as one of Oregon’s scout team quarterbacks but never saw the field. During the 2014 season, Alie became a placeholder for field goals, the role he still plays today. And in 2015, he and Jeff Lockie took over the reins of the Oregon offense in the absence of Vernon Adams Jr.
Coaches and teammates have lauded Alie’s work ethic, which Helfrich credited as one of the main reasons for his scholarship. Freshman quarterback Justin Herbert, who attended Sheldon while Alie was a senior, said that Alie has been “a big inspiration.”
“Just to show up everyday and work his ass off — it’s incredible to watch,” Herbert said.
Helfrich echoed the same sentiment.
“He’s worked his tail off, in every realm … just brings it every single day,” Helfrich said. “That resonates with guys. That work always is credible in football and in sports in general.
“I think when you reward that it’s a positive thing for everybody.”
Follow Gus Morris on Twitter @JustGusMorris