Hawaii turning out quite the crop of college quarterbacks

Marcus Mariota's emergence as one of the NFL's top young stars helped a lot of people realize a good quarterback can be found in the state of Hawaii.

A few years later, it's become obvious the islands have quite a few guys who can spin a football.

The 24-year-old Mariota — now entering his fourth season with the Tennessee Titans after winning the Heisman Trophy at Oregon — was the start of a mini-wave of quarterbacks from Hawaii who are now making a name for themselves at the college level all over the football-crazed Southeast.

Among the standouts:

• Sophomore Tua Tagovailoa is fighting for the starting job at Alabama after leading a second-half comeback in last season's national championship game. The strong-armed lefty threw for 166 yards and three touchdowns in the win over Georgia.

• McKenzie Milton returns for his junior season after leading Central Florida to an undefeated season in 2017. Milton threw for 4,037 yards and 37 touchdowns.

• Senior Jordan Ta'amu has emerged as the starter at Mississippi after filling in for the injured Shea Patterson last season. Ta'amu completed nearly 67 percent of his passes for 1,682 yards and 11 touchdowns and earned the full-time job in the offseason after Patterson left for Michigan.

All four quarterbacks are from Oahu and have a lot of connections. Milton said they have all trained together or played against each other, whether in high school games or in more informal settings like camps.

Both Mariota and Milton credited Vince Passas — the quarterbacks coach at the St. Louis School in Honolulu — for helping develop Hawaii's quarterback talent.

Mariota and Tagovailoa both played at St. Louis.

"He has quarterback camps every Sunday that kids from elementary school to high school go to," Milton said.

"They go out there, throw and compete. Some of the best of the best are there. Marcus will show up when he's back home. You can just kind of compare yourself to those guys and see how good you really are."

True freshman Adrian Martinez was named the starting quarterback over the weekend. Gebbia on Monday dropped his classes and did not attend practice.

Sophomore walk-on Andrew Bunch is in line to be the backup to Martinez.