One football memento stands out in Alex Smith's office above all else, and it's symbolic in nature. It's a Utah helmet with a rose on it, which the Utes wore during the program's first of back-to-back Rose Bowl appearances, after the 2021 season.
 
That may have come 17 years after Smith's playing days in Salt Lake City, but the pride in his alma mater runs that deep, especially since he and his teammates played such a pivotal part in elevating the program to its renowned status of today.
 
"I can't tell you how much that means to me," Smith said. "As a kid who grew up in San Diego, the Rose Bowl is iconic. And I never imagined that Utah would go."
 
Smith is the first Utes player to make the College Football Hall of Fame. And based on the bar set during his era, he most certainly won't be the last.
 
The 6-foot-4 Smith left college as the Fiesta Bowl MVP, having led Utah to a perfect 12-0 season and a No. 4 finish in the 2004 AP poll. The Fiesta Bowl appearance, a 35-7 win over Pitt, marked the first time a team from a non-automatically qualifying BCS conference played in a BCS bowl, earning the Utes the distinction as the inaugural "BCS Buster."
 
He earned Mountain West Conference offensive player of the year honors that season — notable because that was two conferences ago for Utah, which went on to post another perfect season just four years later and then began Pac-12 play in 2011, before joining the Big 12 in 2024.
 
Kyle Whittingham was the Utes' head coach in that Fiesta Bowl, having taken over for Urban Meyer. Morgan Scalley, Smith's Utah teammate, is now the head-coach-in-waiting behind Whittingham, creating a constant throughline from the success of two decades ago to the present day.
 
"It's so moving. It's so humbling to think about that," Smith said of becoming the first Utah player to make the Hall. "I cannot help but think back: I had one scholarship offer, and it was Utah, and a few years before I got to Utah, they were in the WAC. And to just think about where the program is now, and that journey — my journey has been a reflection of that, too. It was together."
 
Smith had been an undersized quarterback running the wing-T at Helix High, which commanded the attention of recruiters everywhere thanks to Reggie Bush (CHOF '23). Few could have ever imagined Smith and Bush sharing the stage in New York just a few years later, as in 2004 they became the first pair of high school teammates to become Heisman Trophy finalists in the same year.
 
That scenario seemed even less plausible after Smith's freshman year of 2002, when Utah went 5-6 and fired coach Ron McBride. Smith's redshirt was burned halfway through the season, with the "highlight" being a pick-six in his first game — a loss at San Diego State, in his home city, against a then-winless Aztecs program.
 
Meyer arrived in 2003, changing everything.
 
"You get away from it and you look back on it and it was this amazing time in my life," Smith said. "The BCS was around. We were not allowed in the BCS. And this is something that we constantly talked about, that these guys think they're better than us, and they're not letting us in, and let's break this system down. (Meyer) cultivated this selflessness in the team that we could go achieve this crazy thing together.
 
"It was such an amazing journey. I don't even start that first year. Brett Elliott starts and I'm kind of mixing in and he breaks his wrist and I'm rolling from there. It ends up being this system that launched me. It's everything. The whole thing is built around the quarterback — the run game, the pass game, the spread option. No one had seen anything like it. It was at that point revolutionary in the college system."
 
Smith amassed 6,275 combined career passing and rushing yards, and tallied 62 total touchdowns.
 
The 49ers drafted him No. 1 overall in 2005, the start of a 16-season, three-team NFL career that saw Smith make three Pro Bowls and earn comeback player of the year honors in 2020 after a gruesome leg injury. He has been an NFL analyst on ESPN since his retirement from playing.
The heights that Utah climbed — from Meyer going around campus trying to drum up student interest to then selling out every single home game of the Pac-12 era — make this honor all the more memorable for Smith.
"It just was such an insane ride to think about," Smith said.
 
ALEX SMITH: UP CLOSE
 

• Named a First Team All-American in 2004, finishing fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting while also claiming CoSIDA Academic All-American of the Year honors.
• Went 21-1 as a starter, culminating with a 12-0 season in 2004 and a win in the Fiesta Bowl and a No. 4 ranking in the final AP Poll.
• Finished his career with 389 completions for 5,203 yards and 47 touchdowns, adding 286 rushes for 1,072 yards and 15 touchdowns on the ground.
• Played for coaches Ron McBride and Urban Meyer.
• Becomes the first player from Utah to enter the College Football Hall of Fame.