About how he was . . . well, brilliant.
Yet understanding how all of that came to be is a mystery that exceeds even the nearly unfathomable rise that Smith has made with the No. 7 Utes, from third-string backup to Heisman Trophy candidate in a span of barely 14 months.
It practically defies explanation, in fact, considering that his parents insist they weren't reading poetry to Smith while he was still in the womb or playing Mozart and Mendelssohn for him as he lay in the crib.
"He was just always really engaged," his mother, Pam Smith, said.
However unexplainable its development might have been, though, Smith's intellectual relentlessness now has grown to clearly serve as its own explanation, for how a kid who was good - but not great - as a younger athlete could transform himself into one of the finest college football players in America after nearly leaving his college program altogether out of frustration with its haphazard management.
"The thing I remember about Alex as a little boy, all the way up, was the ability to focus," his mother said. "If he's reading a book or if he's watching something, he's just . . ."
"Some people call it 'stubborn,' " added Doug Smith, his father.
Stubborn, focused . . . call it compulsive, if you want.
Smith has used the trait to harness perhaps the most diverse offense in college football and lead the Utes, once the Mountain West Conference's leading experts on the execution of Murphy's Law, to the historic doorstep of the Bowl Championship Series.
"Their quarterback is as good as we expected him to be," Colorado State coach Sonny Lubick said.
Never mind all of the stats, which are prodigious.
Smith is 18-1 as the starter, having inherited the job by chance - the Utes turned to him after former starter Brett Elliott was hurt early last season - but mastered it by force of will.
He watched hours and hours of game film and attended game-plan strategy meetings with his coaches to comprehend every little nuance of their offense, while also single-mindedly developing his body into the kind of machine that could do all of the things he needed.
"If he didn't work this summer on his own time, if he didn't work and spend extra time, we couldn't do this stuff," coach Urban Meyer said.
Won't do it, either, if Smith is uneasy.
"I don't think there's any part of the game plan that goes through if he hasn't really given it approval," quarterbacks coach Dan Mullen said. "Not that he has the final say, but he's going to look at it, and if he doesn't feel comfortable with things, then we're going to try to look to try to make it so he does feel comfortable with certain looks."
Information, please: Not that Smith is the only quarterback who ever hit the rewind button, or discussed with coaches how to beat a cover-two - although Elliott, for example, was never a fan of studying game tapes.
But his uncommon ability to process all of the information he absorbs, and call upon it instantaneously while a blitzing linebacker bears down on him, clearly sets Smith apart from others at his position.
Only a couple of other quarterbacks in the country can equal his combined passing and running production - he ranks seventh nationally by averaging 292.8 yards of offense per game - and few others can boast comparable records.
"I truly understand what we're trying to do," Smith said. "Obviously, if I weren't in there and they installed [the game plans], I'd get some feeling. But I'm actually understanding the background behind the game plan. I'm understanding what the goals are, what the motives are for certain plays, and that leads to better awareness on the field."
Understanding.
Awareness.
Those are things that Smith picked up a long time ago - who knows exactly how, or precisely why? - while growing up the third of four children born to a high school football coach and a public-service worker who put an emphasis on education in their household.
Doug Smith grew up in Idaho Falls and played football at Weber State College in Ogden, along with his brother, John L. Smith, who later became the head coach at Utah State before moving on to Louisville and Michigan State.
He's the principal at Helix High School near San Diego now, but Doug Smith spent years moving around Idaho, Washington and California as a high school football coach, affording young Alex plenty of exposure to, and understanding of, sports.
Growing up: Smith played soccer, baseball and golf, in addition to football, and learned to ski when he was 2 years old.
"Alex was a good, solid player, but never the star," his mother said. "He wasn't particularly fast, he wasn't the shining star. But he was solid, and always got along well."
It did not hurt his development, either, that while he loved learning everything from calculus to world history in school, he also was able to review videotapes of his high school games with his father and older brother.
"He's always been a student of the game, I think," Pam Smith said. "After the game he'd be home with his dad and his brother and they would dissect the game and analyze it. . . ."
"A coach's worst nightmare, you know," Doug Smith joked, "the father-coach."
In a sense, though, there wasn't much to coach.
Smith played for a high school team that was loaded with talent and seldom passed the ball.
Instead, Smith was charged mostly with turning around and handing off to Reggie Bush, a star in the making who has lived up to everybody's expectations by playing for No. 1 USC.
Smith has joked that he used to occasionally cheer for Bush to get tackled, so he might stay in the game longer and get a chance to pass. Typically, Bush so bulldozed opponents that he and Smith sat out most of the second half because Helix had built such a huge lead.
And who knows?
Smith himself has suggested that he might never have wound up at Utah, had he been able to attract more recruiting attention.
But that's just one of the serendipitous turns that Smith's career has taken, based significantly on his broad intellectual capacity and willingness to trust his own ability.
"Once he got his opportunity," teammate Paris Warren said, "he exploded."
That chance, however, almost never came.
A rocky start: Smith had been planning to redshirt as a freshman two years ago, when the former coaches infamously threw him into a blowout loss at San Diego State - in front of his hometown family and friends, no less - in a desperate attempt to save the game and, in turn, their own jobs.
Ill-prepared for the sudden and unexpected demand, Smith played terribly. He took only a handful of snaps, was sacked twice, and left the field after throwing an interception that was returned for a touchdown.
That was bad enough.
But the family already had begun to feel jerked around, saying former offensive coordinator Craig Ver Steeg told them each week that Smith was going to play, only to leave him on the bench.
And when the Utes finally did burn Smith's redshirt season, they returned him to the bench as a backup, rather than continue to use him and work on developing his talents during the season's final five games.
"Were we going to leave?" Doug Smith said. "Oh, yeah."
But Smith liked Utah well enough, appreciated the chemistry among his teammates. So when the Utes fired coach Ron McBride nearly two years ago and hired Meyer to replace him, Smith was willing to listen.
"Urban did come down and meet with us, very early on," Pam Smith recalled. "He, in fact, apologized to us for what had happened to him. He said, 'You know, I had nothing to do with it, it's just absolutely . . . it's a terrible thing.' And he just told us that, you know, things would be different."
He had no idea.
His chance to shine: Smith still had taken but a handful of snaps when Elliott dove for the goal line on a two-point conversion attempt at the end of a game at Texas A&M early last season, broke his wrist and unwittingly ceded his starting position forever.
But the Utes could hardly have imagined Smith would be the key that unlocked some of the best football they had ever played.
Not only was he a sophomore who had barely been in a college game, but he was fighting an excruciating back injury and had exactly four days to prepare for his first start, against California of the Pac-10 Conference, on national television.
Nervous?
Not Smith.
"When I said, 'Alex, it's going to be on national TV,' and I'm wondering if that's going to make him nervous, he just said, 'Oh, good. John will get to see it,' " Pam Smith recalled, referring to John L. Smith. "Again, I think he goes in and focuses, and from that first game, he had a lot of composure."
Playing in front of the largest crowd ever to watch a football game in Salt Lake City, Smith indeed appeared a savvy veteran.
Using a scaled-back version of the offense to suit his lack of experience, he nonetheless completed 18 of 27 passes for 136 yards, ran for 71 yards and a touchdown and directed two scoring drives in the fourth quarter that lifted the Utes to a 31-24 victory.
"Things just started to make sense to me, as far as this offense," Smith said. "That was a big step."
He wasn't the only one who thought so.
"It really changed when he stepped on the field against Cal," Mullen said. "He really picked it up another level. He'd always been pretty sharp in practice and productive in practice and always done good things, but he never missed a beat in the game. He just showed that extra spark, that leadership, that ability.
"When the bright lights come on at game time, a lot of guys go in one of two directions," Mullen added. "They either take it up a step or they kind of shy away from it. And when the lights went on, for him, it was showtime. . . . He came out and performed. He was getting hit, they were pressuring him, and he stood in the pocket and delivered the ball and made all the throws. And I think from then on, he really hasn't slowed up much."
Not even a little.
Quite a run: The Utes have lost precisely one time in 18 games since Smith beat the Golden Bears, and not at all since New Mexico surprisingly ran roughshod over them at home more than a year ago.
The offense has been expanded to mind-boggling proportions - to many players, anyway - and the winning streak has reached 13 games. The Utes can equal the school record set from 1928-30 if they win their last two regular-season games and a bowl game, perhaps the Fiesta Bowl.
And Smith?
All he has done in that span is perfect his throwing motion to maximize his passing efficiency, add some 15 pounds of muscle through offseason workouts, and improve his quickness and agility enough that he can run the Utes' option plays every bit as as well as he can drop back and fire strikes to his talented receivers.
Oh, and continue to impress his teammates with his work ethic and laid-back manner that makes it easy for them to enjoy watching a movie or going bowling with him.
"He's a great guy," backup quarterback Brian Johnson said. "He puts a lot into what he's doing, whether it's in the
classroom or on the football field. He prepares better than anybody I've ever been around. He knows every situation, he's in there watching film all the time. That's encouraged me, too, I want to be like that when I get a chance to start."
Of course, that might be a while yet.
What's next? Smith is just a junior, and he should be back next season as one of the most heralded returning quarterbacks in the country - though there is the possibility that he passes up his senior season to enter the National Football League.
The Smiths, all of them, put off questions on that topic for the moment, preferring instead to enjoy the "great joy" of such a harmonious season.
Yet it's not hard to imagine that Smith, having already earned that undergraduate degree in economics and taken a jump start toward a master's, could bolt for the pros, particularly if Meyer leaves Utah for another job.
But that's another issue for another time.
Smith's focus - so precise, so inexorable - is aimed directly as the Wyoming Cowboys, the team the Utes will play in Laramie on Saturday. After that, it will turn toward Brigham Young, and then a bowl game.
The Heisman?
That, and all of the other potentially historic accoutrements for which the Utes are aiming this season, is something Smith cannot afford to consider right now, as if he ever did before.
"It's something you dream about in your wildest dreams," he conceded. "But other than that, it's nothing I ever seriously was thinking about. I've said this before, if you try to win and you try to have good stats and you try to put up big numbers, that's when you play bad. I play my best when I just take what's given."
mcl@sltrib.com
