HUNTSVILLE | Billy Hall’s football-playing days may or may not be finished.
The former Scott High quarterback still has an opportunity to get paid to play the game that he has excelled at since he was just a boy growing up in Scott County.
But on Friday, Hall’s status as a Highlander legend was forever enshrined with the retirement of his No. 9 jersey.
Only Hall’s jersey was retired — not his number, meaning that future Highlander players can still don the number down the road; junior wideout Rylan Griffin currently wears it — but there may never be another No. 9 who has as big an impact on Scott High football as Hall.
There’s room for argument about who is the best quarterback to ever sling a pigskin at Scott High. Certainly, some would say Hall. Some would say his father, Bill Hall. Some would say Scotty Brumett. Some would say Jake Sexton.
But one thing is for certain: Hall is the only Scott High quarterback to ever play in a national championship game, and he could become the only Highlander to ever play in the professional ranks.
During Hall’s four seasons at Scott High, the Highlanders won 27 games and made the playoffs all four years. That alone makes him one of only a handful of Scott High players when it comes to accomplishments.
As a senior in 2016, Hall quarterbacked the most prolific offense in Scott High history. He was named Region 2-3A’s offensive player of the year and set single-game passing records for yardage (398), touchdowns (6), total yards (471) and total touchdowns (7).
Following that record-setting senior season in Huntsville, Hall signed with Reinhardt University in Georgia. There, he rewrote the school’s passing record book and helped guide his team to the NAIA national championship game as a freshman in 2017.
The Eagles came up short, falling to University of Saint Francis in the championship game in Daytona Beach, but Hall would help them get back to the playoffs in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, when Hall was a senior and covid turned everything upside down, Reinhardt went undefeated in a regular season that was bumped back to the Spring of 2021, and then advanced to the NAIA quarterfinals.
Granted an extra year of eligibility by the NCAA, Hall played a fifth senior in Waleska last fall and again quarterbacked his team to the postseason. His career ended with a 16-13 loss to Keiser.
Across his final three seasons, Hall completed 55% of his passes for 4,132 yards and 45 touchdowns. He was named the NAIA national player of the week nine different times, and an All-American.
In nine years of high school and college football, Hall’s teams never failed to make the playoffs.
In five years of college ball, his teams never failed to win a conference championship.
It’s quite a resume even without the personal records. But there are those, too. At Reinhardt, Hall holds single-game records for touchdown passes, total touchdowns, passing yards, total yards, pass completions, most rushing yards by a quarterback and most rushing touchdowns by a quarterback.
Hall also holds Reinhardt’s single-season records for touchdown passes, total touchdowns, passing yards, total yards, pass completions, most rushing yards by a quarterback and most rushing touchdowns by a quarterback.
Finally, Hall holds Reinhardt’s career records for total starts, touchdown passes, completions, total touchdowns, total yards, most rushing yards by a quarterback and most rushing touchdowns by a quarterback.
And on Friday night in Huntsville, where he was wrapping up his first season as an assistant coach for Scott High, Hall became just the third player in Scott High history to have his jersey retired.
If that is the period at the end of Hall’s playing career, it will have been quite a remarkable career. For now, though, it’s just a comma. And, in the meantime, Hall is content to help teach the game to a new generation of talent at the school where he helped elevate the bar for success.
