He's not in the Avocado League anymore.

Only a year removed from high school, Utah quarterback Jordan Wynn will experience an entirely different level of football Saturday night when the Utes visit unbeaten Texas Christian, featuring one of the country's best defenses. With the Mountain West Conference lead and potentially much more on the line, Wynn naturally labels this as "the biggest game of my life."

Then again, he played in games that carried the same description last year, and the year before that.

The Horned Frogs themselves may overwhelm Wynn, but the stage will not. Judging by the examples of other freshman quarterbacks who grew up in southern California, a background of playing important games in big stadiums will serve him well in Fort Worth, Texas.

In September, USC's Matt Barkley beat Ohio State and Michigan's Tate Forcier topped Notre Dame. Back then, Wynn was watching Terrance Cain play for the Utes, while potentially redshirting. Suddenly, he's facing the Frogs in November.

John Carroll advises us not to worry about him.

"He's calm and cool, beyond his experience," said Carroll, Wynn's coach at Oceanside High School, north of San Diego. "It didn't matter what environment he came into."

Oceanside fell to Helix, Alex Smith's old school, to begin Wynn's junior season. The Pirates never lost again in his two years as their quarterback. Along the way, they ended two opponents' 25-game winning streaks, claimed two San Diego Section titles at Qualcomm Stadium, won a state championship bowl game and pounded Forcier's Scripps Ranch team in the playoffs last December, under rather eerie conditions. A power outage allowed for only half of the field to be lighted, forcing both offenses to go the same direction -- starting in the darkened end, if field position so dictated.

"Kind of a weird deal," Wynn said this week, recalling the scene.

Not that it bothered Wynn especially. "Things don't faze him," Carroll said.

That's partly because, as Carroll said, Wynn "was born to play in the position."

If that's an exaggeration, it is only slightly so. Wynn's father, Robert, had his son in the yard "playing catch, taking snaps, dropping back -- you name it, I did it, since I was 5 or 6," Wynn said.

In high school, he was known for continually watching film in Carroll's office. "Not that he doesn't have a social life," Carroll said, "but he loves the game. [Football] is what he does."

That's among the reasons Wynn is earning comparisons to Smith and Brian Johnson, credited with extensive studying. It helped that by the end of their Ute careers, they were graduate students with light course loads. Wynn is still a freshman adjusting to college life. Among the legendary Ute QBs, Scott Mitchell redshirted as a freshman, Smith barely played and Johnson appeared only when games were decided.

Wynn's advantage is he's considerably older (19 years, four months) than Smith and Johnson were as freshmen and, like Barkley and Forcier, he enrolled in college in January, going through spring practice and summer workouts.

"All three of us had great quarterback coaches growing up, and we all had good experience and everything," Wynn said. "It shows, how well all three of us are playing."

That's over a total of six quarters, in his case. Which is why Wynn's beating TCU would top Barkley's and Forcier's signature wins -- and any out-of-nowhere QB story in Ute history.

It would far exceed Smith's defeat of Cal in his first start as a sophomore and Brett Ratliff's fill-in victory over BYU.

Wynn appears to his teammates "like a seasoned vet out there," said receiver Jereme Brooks. And, in a way, he is. The only question is whether squashing everybody in the Avocado League is adequate preparation for playing the Frogs in Fort Worth.

As they say in Texas, we're fixin' to find out.

kkragthorpe@sltrib.com