The first time Brady White saw the Liberty Bowl, he thought it was beautiful.

“It was snowing,” he told me. “The Liberty Bowl was covered in white.”

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White was on the verge of transferring from Arizona State to Memphis; he had already decided to make the move, but wanted to see the place.

“I had never been to Tennessee, I had never been to Memphis, I had never seen anything other than through a computer,” he said.

So Mike Norvell, the head coach at the time, drove White and his parents to see the old stadium. Snow had been falling throughout the day.

“It’s definitely a moment I can vividly imagine,” White said. “I remember what corner of the end zone I was in. That was my first interaction with it. It’s a beautiful bowl. It’s a great venue to play college ball.”

Some of you may be surprised by that description. But that’s one of White’s innumerable gifts. He sees upside — and possibilities — that others don’t necessarily see. 

When White transferred from a Power Five school in sun-splashed Arizona to come to Memphis, he envisioned playing on national television, winning a conference title and getting to a New Year’s Day bowl. In three remarkable seasons, he has done all those things.

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Saturday, White will bus to the Liberty Bowl for the last time as the starting quarterback at Memphis. It has been a beautiful run.

Oh, to be clear, he has never said this would be his final season at Memphis. He technically could come back for one more year.

But the guy was part of the same high school class as Josh Rosen, Kyler Murray, Sam Darnold and Joe Burrow. White already has an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree, and has completed nearly half the work required for his Ph.D. I know this last part because I asked him about it on a Zoom news conference the other day. I wanted to know if he planned to finish his doctorate.

“Let’s just throw a scenario out there, let’s say I do leave,” White said. “You still have, like, 10 years or whatever, once you’re gone, to come back and finish the program.”

Let’s just throw a scenario out there?

It’s the only scenario that makes sense.

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All of which makes Saturday’s game against Houston a goodbye party to the greatest quarterback in program history.

What, some of you aren’t sure about that title? What would you prefer?

Most prolific quarterback? White already has the school record in touchdown passes (85) and needs just 56 yards to own the record for career passing yards.

Best student-athlete in university history? That certainly fits, too.

Or how about best winner? White already has more wins (26) than any Memphis quarterback.

“That’s all he cares about,” said Deron White, Brady’s father. “He wants to win.”

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White won his first game at the Liberty Bowl, beating Mercer back in 2018. He went 6-for-6 on his first drive. He led eight touchdown drives before halftime of that game.

His record at the Liberty Bowl is 18-1, the one blemish a one-point loss (31-30) to UCF in 2018, which he rectified with a one-point win (50-49) this year. 

But two wins stand out above all others. The first was the 35-23 win over Navy in September 2018. That’s when White was loudly booed after badly missing on a throw to Damonte Coxie in the first half. He remembers it well. But what he remembers, more than the booing, is what happened in the wake of the boos.

“What I love is the response,” he said.

White threw for 196 yards and three touchdowns in the second half, including a 73-yard touchdown pass to Antonio Gibson on third-and-13. So much for the silly notion that White “couldn’t throw.”

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“The guy is pretty dang special,” Norvell said after the game. ”When I saw him smile, I knew it was on.”

That performance against Navy embarrassed most of White’s critics. But not all of them. Indeed, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a great college player put up with such persistent doubts. Even now, if White has a bad quarter, some will start grumbling again.

It’s like they don’t quite understand that White will set every meaningful passing record by the time he is done. Or that he is the quarterback who delivered one of the great, memorable experiences in the city’s sports history.

That’s the other moment that stands out, of course. When SMU and ESPN’s “College GameDay” came to town. Without White, there would have been no “GameDay.” And the day would not have wrapped up with a win.

Earlier this week, White was asked what individual plays he’ll look back and remember from his Memphis career. The two he mentioned both came from a 98-yard touchdown drive in the third quarter against SMU.

Facing third-and-8 from the 2-yard line, White dropped into the end zone and tossed a ball over an SMU linebacker to Antonio Gibson for a gain of 10 yards.

“We needed to try to take the momentum,” Norvell said. “That third-and-8 throw might be one of the best that I’ve seen Brady make.”

A few plays later, Memphis faced a fourth-and-2 at the SMU 48. White zipped a ball to Calvin Austin III on a crossing pattern.

“Super contested throw-and-catch,” White said.

Once, critics said he wasn’t the kind of quarterback who could lead Memphis on a winning touchdown drive. Now White was doing it, routinely, on national TV. He wound up throwing for 350 yards and three touchdowns against SMU in that unforgettable 54-48 win.

This year has been less eventful, certainly. The pandemic took care of that. But White has never played better than he did in beating UCF at the Liberty Bowl the same week that Coxie opted out.

White was rocked by the news that Coxie was walking away. That’s understandable, right?

“But he quickly refocused,” Deron White said. “He was like, ‘OK, we’ve got to figure out a way to beat UCF with the guys that we have.’ Tahj Washington is going to have to step up. Javon Ivory is going to have to be an impact guy.

“And you know what? The guys played their asses off. That was an incredible win.”

So now White will try and do it one more time, try and leave the Liberty Bowl with one more victory. There won’t be 50,000 fans in the stadium, like there were when he beat Ole Miss. A title won’t be on the line, like there was when he beat Cincinnati back-to-back. 

But whatever White was imagining when he stood in the snow and looked at the stadium for the first time, it couldn’t be any more satisfying than what actually transpired.

“I know that not everybody loved me initially, but I think we’ve grown to have a nice compatible relationship,” he said. “If you love the city, if you love this program, if you love the fans, they’re going to love you back. Whether that’s right away or eventually, it’ll come around. I’m pretty sure that when my time is up, they’ll appreciate they had No. 3 on their team.

“Nobody has a perfect story and that’s what I love about it. Nothing’s perfect, I’m not perfect. I feel like my story, my legacy, is that I got the job done.”