EUGENE Ore. >>  The gleaming, new $68 million Hatfield-Dowling Complex for football at the University of Oregon, replete with Brazilian hardwood floors, Ferrari leather chairs and European urinals, speaks to opulent entitlement.

The man who deferentially opens — and insists on patiently holding — the door for a stream of visitors, however, is testament to ah-shucks humility.

He is Marcus Mariota, the starting quarterback on the No. 2 ranked team in the country, not a backpack-toting summer student tour guide. But you’d hardly catch the distinction except for the excited exclamations of “there’s Marcus!” recognition from passers by.

A few steps away, The Duck Store displays versions of Mariota’s No. 8 jersey in the showroom window and high up on its interior walls, price tag: $90. But the fleet feet that lead the nation’s most productive offense are firmly planted on the ground.

“I’m blessed to be here, to have this opportunity,” Mariota said. Though it is his coaches, teammates and, indeed, practically everybody you run across on this campus that insist the blessing is theirs.

“He’s a unique individual,” said Hroniss Grasu, the Ducks starting center. Grasu could be talking about the athletic achievements of the first freshman in 23 years to be chosen an all-Pac-12 quarterback. The versatile player Stanford head coach David Shaw calls, “the most complete quarterback in the nation.”

To be sure, the 6-foot, 4-inch, 211-pound Saint Louis School graduate is all of those, but he is also, “the most humble guy I’ve ever been around,” Grasu said. “He is as respectful of walk-ons who will never set foot on the field for a game as he is of the stars on the team.

“He represents everybody — his family, his state, his school and the team — with class. That’s why guys respect him.”

The testimonial is telling in that Grasu’s high school teammate and former roomate, Bryan Bennett, is the upperclassmen Mariota beat out a year ago for the starting quarterback job.

It was a long, close competition that could have divided the team. Instead, “He (Marcus) won it and has shown he was the right choice,” Grasu said. “The team rallied around him.”

Bennett, seeing no future at Oregon with Mariota firmly entrenched and growing into the role, transferred at season’s end.

Oregon head coach  Mark Helfrich recalls standing high up on Kalaepohauku on the grass practice field at Saint Louis and gazing at the “unbelievable” vista of Diamond Head.  

Then something else took his breath away.

“It was the spring of Marcus’ junior year and he was incredible,” Helfrich said. “He was an amazing worker, he won every sprint and then he started throwing the ball (through a stiff wind). All of a sudden it was like, I’m thinking, ‘what am I missing? How is this guy so good that every school in the world isn’t here (after him) right now, too?’”

In time, after Mariota committed to Oregon, they would come. “When word got around, all the other schools started asking about him,” said Darnell Arceneaux, the Crusaders’ coach at the time. “But he had made his commitment to Oregon and he stuck by his word. That’s the way he was raised.”

Mariota played behind Jeremy Higgins and only became a starter after Higgins went off to Utah State, blossoming in his senior season.

“Marcus just needed an opportunity but Higgins was older, ahead of him and having a great season, completing something like 75 percent of his passes,” Arceneaux said. “It was hard for Marcus to wait. But it was good for him to work hard; it made him hungry. He never complained or got down. He just worked and worked so when the opportunity finally came he was ready. I think it helped prepare him for when he got to Oregon. We talked about seizing the opportunity when it comes … and he did.”

It wasn’t the intricate playbook, or the world-class competition confronting Mariota upon arrival in Eugene that prompted him to call home with wavering thoughts and a longing for the islands.

It was the seemingly interminable gray skies, the constant rain and raw cold.

“When you come from Hawaii, where it always seems to be 80 degrees, the weather here takes some getting used to,” Mariota said. “Once it got cold, I started to wonder if I could make it here. I called home a lot.”

Mariota acknowledged, “I didn’t know if I could do it but my family, my mom (Alana), told me to stick it out. They said that I would get used to it.”

He laughs and says, “I stuck it out and I’m getting used to it. But I’m not used to it yet.”

As the Ducks embark upon their quest for a national championship, Helfrich said he isn’t asking much from his quarterback, “we just kind of want Marcus 2.0, a little bit better, faster, better leader operationally. All the things that go into being a great quarterback and team leader.”

Frankly, Helfrich will tell you, “he has a lot left in the tank, which is scary.”

Mostly they want him to be more vocal and assertive. “He is just a great kid, almost humble to a fault,” Helfrich said. “We’re trying to have him, within his personality, assert himself more.”

How is it going? “It is a process,” Mariota admitted. “I like to be a quiet leader. But, I’m a sophomore this year and I have to step it up for the team.”

At Saint Louis, Arceneaux remembers threatening Mariota with having to run laps if he didn’t get in the face of some of his teammates. “Marcus told me, ‘OK, coach, I guess I’ll just go run, then.’”

When Arceneaux said he would make the whole team run, Mariota became more assertive.

“With Marcus, he leads by example,” Grasu said. “But when he yells, guys listen because they know he isn’t yelling just to prove he’s in authority. They know, with Marcus, there is a reason. People follow him because of the kind of person he is.”

A week or so after the 2013 Fiesta Bowl, where he was the MVP, Mariota woke up one frosty January Oregon morning, warmed by the pinch-me thoughts that consumed him and energized by the challenge of the future.

“I thought about all the things that had happened to me in the past year, being here at Oregon, the team we had, being the starting quarterback, the bowl game, everything. I’d had a crazy amount of success. It as all so, so surreal. It had been like a dream, but it was real. And I felt so blessed, so thankful.”

Mariota said, “And I wanted it to continue. So, I said I wanted to work harder to make the most of the opportunities I have been blessed with.”