Nevada football coach Chris Ault was nervous. It was a mid-September day in 2010 as the Wolf Pack prepared for a landmark game against No. 24-ranked California.

This was the first time in Nevada history that a Pac-10 (now Pac-12) Conference team had ever played at Mackay Stadium, the school's cozy home field of 29,993 seats in Reno. Nevada had played historic powers such as Notre Dame and Nebraska in recent years, but never at home. Other top schools, particularly from the West Coast, had never deigned to give Nevada that much respect.

With that in the back of his mind, Ault watched his team go through an uninspired practice and voiced his concern.

"If we're going to practice like this, we might as well forfeit now so that we don't embarrass ourselves on [Friday]," Ault, who retired following the 2012 season, said to his team.

That's when quarterback Colin Kaepernick spoke up, hugging the line between respect and defiance. In front of all the players, Kaepernick told Ault, "Nobody is getting embarrassed, Coach."

"I thought to myself, 'OK, I have a guy who will stand up,' " Ault said.

Standing up is, of course, just the beginning. Kaepernick also runs like a gazelle and throws as if a rocket launcher is attached to his shoulder. That evening in 2010, Kaepernick and the rest of the Wolfpack rolled to a 52-31 victory over Cal on the way to a 12-1 record and the No. 11 ranking in the final Associated Press poll.

Two years later, Kaepernick is on a Super Bowl chase. Having seized the San Francisco 49ers' starting job at midseason amid controversy after Alex Smith got hurt, Kaepernick has transformed the team into perhaps the NFL's most dangerous heading into the conference championships. Fresh off dispatching the Green Bay Packers on Saturday night behind Kaepernick's NFL playoff-record 181 rushing yards and another 263 through the air, the 49ers go to Atlanta for the NFC title game Sunday.

[More: Early title-game preview: Colin Kaepernick gives 49ers edge in NFC]

While many observers will point out that Kaepernick has done nothing more than what Smith did a year ago when the 49ers hosted the New York Giants in the conference title game, that's a bottom-line approach that ignores substance.

A year ago and for most of the early part of this season, the 49ers were a defense-first, run-second, avoid-offensive-mistakes-oriented team. In 27 games (playoffs included) since the start of the 2011 season with Smith as the starter, the 49ers had seven games in which they scored at least 30 points. In two of those seven, they eclipsed 40.

In eight games (playoffs included) with Kaepernick at the helm, the 49ers have scored at least 30 in four games, including two with 40. Moreover, the two 40-point efforts include the thrashing of Green Bay and mostly one-sided victory at New England in December – the same Patriots team that is currently considered the favorite to win a fourth Super Bowl in the past 12 seasons.

Wait until Jim Harbaugh lays that little bit of info on his starter. You can hear it now, something about how the oddsmakers expect Tom Brady and Bill Belichick to school San Francisco if the 49ers get there.

You can only imagine what Kaepernick might say this time.

FRONT OF THE CLASS

They tell plenty of stories about Kaepernick's exploits at Pitman High in Turlock, Calif., where he starred in football, basketball and baseball. There's the time he scored 34 in a basketball playoff game, going toe-to-toe with future NBA player Ryan Anderson, who put up 50. There's the no-hitter he threw one day before coming home and throwing up in the living room.

"He threw the no-hitter and we didn't know a thing about how he felt," said Rick Kaepernick, Colin's father. "He rode the bus home with the team, got home, took a shower, laid down on the couch, broke out in chills and then … "

The elder Kaepernick mimicked the look of someone throwing up before continuing.

"We took him to the hospital right away and they said he had pneumonia," said Rick, who, along with his wife Teresa, adopted Colin when he was a baby. "He missed a week of school.

"I can't explain it exactly, but he has a fire in him that drives him to finish whatever is the task. He can focus completely on what he has to do and block out whatever bothers him. He has always been able to do that."

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