Last Friday night, Ryan Hilinski was in a pretty good place.
He’d helped lead his Orange Lutheran High School football team to a last-second win against a good opponent. The next day, the South Carolina quarterback commitment checked the Twitter account he keeps for reference (he’s not tweeting during the season), and the messages were a little odd.
“It starts blowing up,” Hilinski said. “And I look at it … and I see people tagging me and they’re like ‘Ryan, can you get here soon? Sooner than later.’ ‘Ryan, we need you now.