All-State Football: Langi Rolled as Miners' Top Gun

Harvey Langi was unarguably the biggest star on Bingham’s 14-0 championship team, whose dominance people will grumble about long after the running back has moved on to Stanford, Utah, Southern Cal or any of the other half-dozen schools begging him to attend classes on their campuses.

The most famous high schooler in Utah is, somehow, humble about all this attention, instead trying to deflect it to his teammates.

“We had weapons everywhere,” he said. “We were like a soldier filled with different kinds of ammo and weapons.”

But Langi was the Miners’ top gun. His cutback moves made college coaches smile and his breakaway speed left defenders slapping the turf in disgust.

But 2010 season for Langi wasn’t just about long runs and touchdowns — he had 17, by the way, despite rarely playing into the fourth quarter. In October, Langi was suspended for the Miners’ first playoff game after police cited him for trespassing and said he admitted to smoking marijuana. Langi subsequently passed a drug test.

Langi called that experience “a big eye-opener” and “that all this stuff, I could have had dropped in a second.”

The opportunities presented to Langi, he seems to recognize, are too critical to mess up.

“I don’t want to be that guy people are like, ‘Oh, I remember Harvey, he couldn’t make it because he wasn’t eligible for college,’” Langi said.

So he continues to focus on school and football, preparing to get better. He watches the great running backs — Adrian Peterson, LaDainian Tomlinson, even Walter Payton and Barry Sanders. Those are his college prep courses.

“Every time I watch them I get butterflies,” Langi said, “like I could do that and I want to do that.”