If you happened to take a stroll somewhere along the Huron River on Labor Day, you might’ve run into an unlikely angler.
Standing at 6-foot 6 and 340 pounds, senior tackle Myles Hinton had hit the banks some 48-odd hours after his inaugural game for the No. 2 Michigan football team. Hinton reeled in a small-mouth bass and some blue gill, finishing a “chill session” along the waterbody that slices Ann Arbor in two.
While some of his teammates took ice baths, played video games or attempted to soak up the final moments of the long holiday weekend, Hinton relaxed away with one of his favorite activities. It’s a space where football fades away for the starting tackle. And after his first contest in front of nearly 110,000 people — one in which Hinton admits he played less than optimal — a moment alone with a rod and a reel is all he could ask for.
But earlier in the morning on that same Monday, in front of numerous reporters and teammates, Hinton wasn’t so relaxed. Rather, he confidently laid his truth bare.
“I feel like I didn’t (play) very well — to be frank,” Hinton said Sept. 4. “I felt like my feet were all over the place. I just need to calm down, settle in … because I didn’t play like I practiced.”
An uncommon response in an era of self-marketing, NIL and media control, Hinton’s unadulterated truth speaks to more than just his strong character. When it comes to Myles Hinton, life is much more than just football.
It may seem like a misnomer. Transferring in from Stanford, the tackle was originally recruited by Michigan out of Greater Atlanta Christian High School as an elite four-star recruit. The son of NFL offensive tackle Christopher Hinton and brother of Michigan-alumnus and current NFL defensive lineman Chris Hinton, a football legacy is in his blood.
But on the water — after a bad game, or a good one — none of that matters. Because Myles’s football experience has nothing to do with his past and everything to do with his future.
“My parents always told me, football is never going to last forever,” Myles said. “And outside of ball, you always want to have something going for you.”
That he does. Myles, in addition to being an avid fisherman, is an excellent artist and environmentalist. Majoring in marine biology at the University of Michigan, Myles’ life outside of football is just as accomplished as the one on the gridiron. It’s a mentality he’s always kept and one that isn’t going away anytime soon.
“I’ll still die by this,” Myles said. “If you are too much one-sided into football, and your success in the sport isn’t going as well, it affects you so much more. If you have something else that’s going on, you can distract your mind or do some other stuff.”
Myles’s perspective, while necessary, is sometimes all too unique. In a dominant sports culture of hyperspecialization, where the desire to hone in on the skills that can take an athlete to the “next level” becomes all consuming, it’s far too common that the person behind the athlete can be left behind.
But for Myles, it isn’t so. In fact, his love of fishing may be just as old as his love for football. Reminiscing on his first bass that he caught toward the end of elementary school, Myles described it as a “gateway drug.” He never looked back. Even briefly considering the possibility of becoming a pro-fisherman as a child, Myles’s love of fishing was paramount from the beginning.
But it didn’t stop there. Excelling academically as well as in extracurricular activities, his love of the water spawned a new passion: marine biology.
The sciences came naturally to Myles. Describing the dizzying world of biology, science and anatomy as “common sense,” Myles found a world where his academic inclinations married his love of the fishing environment. And as he explored his passions further, Myles realized that a new world of possibilities lay ahead of him.
“(My brain) works in material stuff,” Myles affirmed. “If I can see a bone, or see a diagram of a fish, I can kind of tell how stuff should work.”
Evident through his otherworldly art, his brain picks up the little things. Whether blitzes, or biology, his multifaceted identity comes naturally.
“Myles is a true Renaissance man,” said Tim Hardy, his high school head coach at Greater Atlanta Christian, said. “… He’s a football guy and obviously he’s grown up in it himself with his dad with his brother. But there’s really a lot of balance still. And I think that’s one of his strengths is that it’s not all one thing.”
It’s a balance that breeds confidence — a confidence that exists outside of pigskin and pass protections. Myles aspires to graduate to the NFL eventually, whether this year or beyond. However, he understands that the game is fickle. Because for Myles, while football is a lifelong passion, playing football won’t be.
That’s not to say that Myles neglects his football duties. Rather, Hardy emphasized that Myles’ plethora of talents only fed into his gifted physical abilities. A mental and physical force on the field, Myles’ academic skills allowed him to understand the game as well as he played it.
Courtesy of Myles Hinton
“(He) always wanted to know the ‘why,’ ” Hardy said. “He wanted to know the next level … Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime, right? So, if you answer those questions, he wanted to know why we did ‘this’ and what was going on.”
Thus, even after Myles played an admittedly unsuccessful game — the tackle scored a 50.4 PFF grade against East Carolina this past weekend that ranked lowest on the offense — he knows there’s more out there. There’s more to his game, more to his life, more to himself. And as he gears up for his second game against UNLV, he still has more ahead of him — football and beyond.
It allows Myles to stay grounded. Fishing, studying and creating all remind him that failure is not final — and neither is football.
In reality, there is no true final plan yet. But, his favorite class thus far at Michigan has been in coastal ecology. As his professor uses down time to travel to the Bahamas and set up sustainable coral reefs with cinder blocks, Myles can begin to see the life that could come after football.
Hoping to make enough money in football to eventually pursue his other passions full time, Myles understands that even though the time for football is now, that doesn’t mean any of his interests are isolated from one another. Just as his love for the arts and sciences go hand in hand, so too does his knowledge of what his passion for football can help him achieve outside the lines.
“It’s not the most lucrative profession,” Myles said of marine biology. “So if I can have security financially, and do what I love, that would be the best thing ever.”
Even after a hiccup against the Pirates, Myles still has many game days to go. On Saturdays and — if things go right — on Sundays too. And as Myles pursues his passion for football, marine biology and Caribbean corals may have to wait.
But for now, the banks of the Huron will do.