That's Hill's impression of what happened. From the horses mouth would be Mendenhall saying 'we forgot about Hill'.
Again, it's my opinion that BYU stopped recruiting any QB of high quality in order to sign Heaps, a guy who wanted to start as a freshman. I also have reason to believe that the Heaps clan was dubious that Hill would go on a mission and that they actually reached out to him when it was clear that he was going.