DENTON, Tex. — When the 2019 college football season begins, the active Football Bowl Subdivision leader in career passing yards will be a small quarterback from an appropriately tiny town who received a single F.B.S. scholarship offer coming out of high school.

That North Texas bothered to recruit Mason Fine at all in January 2016 owes itself to a conversation between Seth Littrell, the Mean Green’s incoming head coach, and Matt Hennesy, Fine’s high school coach in Locust Grove, Okla.

The two men had been friends for years, and Hennesy knew Littrell needed a quarterback. He had just the guy. This was “a once-in-a-lifetime kid” who was the only two-time Gatorade Player of the Year in Oklahoma history. He had elevated a doormat program to a state title contender, notched pinball numbers in the same Air Raid offense Littrell runs and yet he had accrued zero major recruiting interest aside from an invitation to walk on at Oklahoma State.

Sounds great, Littrell thought. What’s the flaw?

“He’s short,” Hennesy said.

Short, in Fine’s case, is 5-foot-10, a figure that for generations has frightened colleges and stood as a death knell to N.F.L. dreams. Even now, after amassing 9,358 passing yards and back-to-back seasons with a completion percentage above 63 at North Texas, and leading a college most people outside the state barely associate with football to a 9-3 record, Fine is bracing himself to be overlooked once more when he exhausts his eligibility next year.