BYU football: 2nd year much different for cover-boy QB Heaps

PROVO — What a difference a year makes.

Jake Heaps is on the cover of one of those preseason football magazines. He shares the cover with two other quarterbacks — all in the West — Stanford's Andrew Luck and Boise State's Kellen Moore.

Hype? Well, maybe not in the case of All-Americans Luck and Moore. And it might not be totally hype for Heaps because hype is an exercise he's been living with since his junior year in high school; yet, he piles up accolades.

It is a nice start to 2011 for the BYU sophomore.

This time last year, Jake Heaps finished BYU spring football "hopeful" after a learning-curve spring practice in which he impressed many and statistically stood above all others in camp.

Then summer started, two-a-days began and the Cougars played the two-headed QB game until the Florida State game in Tallahassee on Sept. 18, when Riley Nelson injured his shoulder and surgery sidelined him for the season.

Heaps' season ended with a BYU record-setting MVP performance in a win over UTEP in the New Mexico Bowl.

Now a magazine cover? It wasn't without a glitch, according to Mitch Light, managing editor of Athlon Sports College Football 2011.

"We misspelled Heaps' name. A BYU fan saw it on our website online story and called us. We made the correction (left the 's' off) in time for publication and corrected it on our site."

Light said five people proof-read the cover and story and missed Heap instead of Heaps — although the cover shows the correct spelling on the back of the Cougar player's jersey.

Still, it isn't easy to make a magazine cover unless you are Lindsay Lohan.

BYU quarterbacks historically have been a mainstay for Athlons over the decades since the late '70s. According to Light, back in the day, it was routine to see Cougar and Ute players on the cover when the magazine published a regional magazine that featured the WAC and MWC in a Western Edition.

That was back then.

"Now we don't have that Western cover anymore, but we still want to feature BYU because of its great fan base and the team has been good in recent years. Heaps had a pretty good freshman year and he's expected to be the guy and we went with him."

Light explained Heaps appearance on the cover.