Kedon Slovis once thought Provo was weird, but BYU’s new quarterback says he’s found a home there

Provo • Kedon Slovis was late to church, which was the one thing he had hoped to avoid.

The new BYU quarterback was nervous about attending services of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the first place, but he had been invited to listen to teammate Chase Roberts give a lesson on Christ and hardship. Wearing a black tie and a tan sweater, tailor-made for blending in, Slovis planned to slink into a back seat, support his wide receiver, and leave without making a scene.

A few years ago, when he was one of college football’s rising stars, Slovis had said he’d found Provo to be a “weird” place, likening it to the artificial bubble of “The Truman Show.” Now, on this Sunday, Slovis simply hoped to blend into the cast.

But when he and tight end Carter Wheat entered the room, every head in the congregation’s elders quorum immediately turned back and locked eyes with the newcomer.

“My family is not super religious, so I didn’t grow up going to church,” Slovis said, explaining his hesitancy. “But I definitely feel like the BYU quarterback now. Everyone in church knew who I was and I’d never been there before.”

This would have seemed a very odd marriage just a few years ago when Slovis was leading USC into LaVell Edwards Stadium and cracking jokes about the Cougars afterward, but much has changed since then. When BYU went looking for a leading man with experience at the highest levels of the sport this winter, the Cougars called Slovis. And the fifth-year quarterback, looking for the best place to make his final collegiate stand, listened to their pitch.

“It is totally different from USC and Pitt. Here you aren’t just the face of a college town, it’s a faith,” Slovis said. “I think one of my, not concerns, but questions was, ‘Can I fit in here?’ And immediately my answer was yes.”

Now, as the former Trojan and Panther begins spring practice in Provo tasked with leading the Cougars into the Big 12, all eyes are once again on him.

Getting to Provo

Before understanding how Slovis will fit in with the Cougars, you have to understand how he got to Provo in the first place.

That story, as Slovis tells it, starts in a Marriott hotel lobby in Pittsburgh last December, the second night the NCAA Transfer Portal opened. Still enrolled at Pitt, Slovis rushed through an economics class before finals week and raced across town to meet BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick. The two had talked on the phone the night before, and Roderick was on a plane the next day to meet face-to-face.

Going into that meeting, Slovis was desperate to find a better football fit. Pitt hadn’t worked out in his lone year there: His offensive coordinator abandoned him before the first game and his top receiver Jordan Addison subsequently transferred to USC. That was on the heels of USC firing its head coach before Slovis had to leave town. All the senior wanted to do was get back to playing in a system that showcased his best skills.

And that night, for the next four hours, Roderick and Slovis spoke the same football language. Roderick explained how BYU used a scheme like the one Slovis ran his first year at USC — when the freshman had 30 touchdowns and burst onto the college football scene. Slovis’ first offensive coordinator was Graham Harrell, a Texas Tech alum who ran the air raid; BYU’s base offense is derived from that same air raid strategy.

“The core concepts are still there,” Roderick explained. “When Steve Young and Jim McMahon were playing, it’s the same base offense. We just started talking about those things and the familiarity we had.”

Slovis had run it all before.

“He mentioned to me something like, ‘Coach, your quarterbacks have been averaging 30-plus touchdowns and single-digit interceptions,” Roderick remembered. “I knew that stat but he already knew it. He knew that was something to be a part of.”

In the final hour, they spoke about family, giving Slovis more comfort that eventually he could fit into the culture of BYU, too.

Other teams were interested. UCLA head coach Chip Kelly visited Pittsburgh after Roderick and took Slovis to his favorite wings spot.

“Coach [Pat] Narduzzi called me. ... Somebody must have taken a picture of us at the restaurant,” Slovis remembered. “Pitt was playing UCLA in the bowl game (that Slovis wasn’t playing) and he was like, ‘You better not be sharing our offensive secrets.”

Oregon State made a pitch after. Purdue, where Harrell wound up after USC, was on Slovis’ radar. Some schools offered more NIL dollars. But Slovis had his concerns about rebuilding programs or coordinators who were run heavy. This was a football decision first and foremost for Slovis.

On his visit to Provo, he felt like BYU was the best place for that. Roderick and the entire coaching staff presented him with a plan to tailor the offense around Slovis’ strengths and made it clear he was their first choice in the portal.

Roderick evaluated 25 quarterbacks and seriously considered five, but Slovis was the first person he called. Roderick let a few quarterbacks in the portal go in order to give Slovis more time to make his decision. “There were a few days there where we were a little nervous because we let a couple of guys get away, sort of gambling on the fact that we would get Kedon,” Roderick said.

“Roderick called me the day before I committed and asked if money was a factor,” Slovis said. “I said no.”

Even a recruiting visit mix-up wasn’t about to deter Slovis. BYU had mistakenly booked just two hotel rooms — one for Slovis and one for Slovis’ parents — without realizing Slovis’ parents were divorced. Maybe a different recruit of Slovis’ caliber would have complained, but Slovis didn’t say a word. He bunked with his dad in a king-sized bed for two nights, allowing his mom to have a room to herself.

“Most of the time in recruiting nowadays that would have been drama,” Roderick said. “He didn’t say a word. We found out a few weeks later and we were super embarrassed. And he goes, ‘Oh it’s no big deal, I had a chance to catch up with my dad.’ One of the most accomplished quarterbacks in the country the last four years and he didn’t say a word.”

“I remember leaving the visit here and telling my dad, ‘I don’t about the other places, but I do know I’ll have a lot of offensive success here,’” Slovis said.

Music and a new lease on life

There was another small but significant choice to make when Slovis moved to Provo this January. He had the option of living alone, something not unheard of for a fifth-year senior transfer. Or he could move into a house with six other teammates, including Wheat.

Slovis chose the latter. He had made his football choice, but this would help him navigate the cultural aspects of his new home.

“I went to church and did some LDS stuff,” Slovis said. “But even before that with my roommates, I was like, ‘Oh man, I can be myself.’”

Within weeks, he and Wheat were collaborating on making music. Wheat makes beats. Slovis sings. Back in high school, Slovis used to sing for his friend’s band.

“It is the best football fit, but I actually think this is the best personality fit he has had since he’s been in college, too,” said Max Slovis, Kedon’s father.

And as hard as that may be to see from the outside, it feels right with everything Slovis has been through.

At USC, Slovis rode extremely high his freshman year. He danced into the Heisman trophy conversation for a moment and broke record after record while passing for 3,502 yards as a freshman. He thought he would be in the NFL in three years.

“It was cool seeing his name on ESPN all the time,” Max Slovis said. “It felt like he could do no wrong.”

But then he injured his shoulder during the bowl game and, in Max’s words, the entire situation “soured.”

As he entered his sophomore year, Slovis wasn’t completely healthy as the heat to fire Trojans coach Clay Helton intensified. The next year, Helton was dismissed midseason and for the next 10 games, Slovis was used as the scapegoat for many of the Trojan’s problems.

“He owned it,” Helton said. “... And that’s hard on an 18-to-21 year old, you know? Especially when you’re an SC quarterback, the whole world is critiquing.”

When Slovis transferred to Pitt, it was a different kind of issue. When offensive coordinator Mark Whipple resigned, Slovis was asked to continually hand the ball off instead of pass.

“At Pitt, he dealt with a lot of the political stuff,” Max Slovis said. “Just getting the other guys on the team to kind of believe in what they’re doing, even though maybe he didn’t believe in it so strongly.”

Slovis would call his dad at night and they would talk about how to handle it. The option, at that point, was to transfer again. Pitt coaches openly warned Slovis transferring twice had a poor stigma to it — trying to get him to stay. Slovis himself wondered if he would ever get back to a good place again.

But he had to try.

A culture fit

That experience of transferring twice changes a player. Slovis will tell you that — and he will tell you he looks at the world differently now than he did when he was at USC.

There was a time during the pandemic when Slovis, now infamously, went on a podcast with his fellow USC quarterbacks and called BYU one of the weirdest places he had played.

“You ever seen ‘The Truman Show’? That’s Provo, Utah,” Slovis said. “That’s what we say all the time.”

He continued with memories from visiting Provo during his freshman season: “They’re all Mormon, right? So they’re not drinking. I think that’s almost more intimidating. You’re going in there and usually if there are people who are heckling you, you’re like ‘alright, they’re just drunk.’ But every single person in that stadium is sober heckling you and they’re, like, not cussing. They’re like, ‘Slovis, you stink!’ They were ruthless.”

It went viral, and at the time Slovis didn’t think anything of it. Why would he? He was never going back to Provo again.

“He’s had an interesting journey,” said Mo Hasan, the USC quarterback who interviewed him on the podcast. “When he committed, we got a bunch of notifications on our Twitter account, that [podcast] clip kept getting re-shared.”

But the script has changed for Slovis. The new Slovis is happy to immerse himself in a place he once mocked, appreciative of the opportunity to remake himself into a star and hopefully reignite his NFL dreams.

And he’s willing to do what it takes.

In February, Slovis flew out to California with tight end Isaac Rex and Roberts. Slovis was going to throw with his personal training coach, former BYU quarterback John Beck.

Slovis stayed at Rex’s family home in San Clemente and the three worked out together. In their spare time, they went to the beach and talked about BYU.

“He is still asking a lot of questions and he said he’s going to want to read the Book of Mormon,” Roberts said.

On Sunday during their California trip, Slovis followed his teammates to church once again.

This time, he felt more comfortable.

“I knew the ropes, got out my hymn book,” Slovis joked. “We were kind of like rock stars there.”