Question Is: Which Qb Will It Be?

Life should be a little easier for California coach Tom Holmoe this week. He has next Saturday off and only one quarterback to criticize.

Mike Price at Washington State has less than a week to get ready for UCLA and two QBs to deal with.

Steve Birnbaum and Paul Mencke. Paul Mencke and Steve Birnbaum. One’s a lefty, the other a righty. One, Mencke, throws a nicer ball, the other plays with a little more poise sometimes. Each had their moments. Both made huge mistakes.

Before we go any further, anybody know how to get in touch with Shawn Deeds? The big quarterback with the tight end’s body played in ‘93 and ‘95, didn’t he? He could make himself useful this week.

While 30,000 fans rumbled around 75-year-old Memorial Stadium on Saturday cheered by the weather that from start to finish improved more than the California offense Price used quarterbacks the way an amateur mechanic uses crescent wrenches.

Interchangeably, realizing that that’s all he has in his toolbox.

As the Cougars slid inexorably to their first loss in four games, a 24-14 mistake-marred defeat at Cal, Price’s process of selection almost seemed to come down to tapping his two quarterbacks on the helmets and going eenie-meenie-minie-mo.

While Holmoe has two weeks to figure out how much blame to heap on his quarterback, Justin Vedder, for an offense that basically doesn’t exist - Cal’s 24 points came from its defense - Price faces a stiffer agenda.

How, for starters, does he restore order to an offense that by game’s end had to be a little confused when Cougar quarterbacks were ducking in and out of the huddle like messengers?

Realizing that coaches like to change their quarterbacks as often as they change their oil, Saturday’s game of musical QBs was a strange one, ending with the mobile Cal defense grabbing the last chair and sitting on WSU’s three-game win streak.

The quarterback shuffle was part of an afternoon of contradictions. When the rain stopped, play got sloppier. Offenses moved backwards. A defensive end, Cal’s Mawuko Tugbenyoh, scored the first touchdown. The best runner on the field Cal’s Dealtha O’Neal plays defense. He’s a cornerback who returned one of Birnbaum’s passes 76 yards for the decisive score.

You could imagine Holmoe sending out the offense after that play with the order to just go out and hold ‘em.

That’s usually what you tell your defense, isn’t it?

Cal has gone to 3-1 with a prevent offense. It’s an offense without one meaningful scoring drive in four games.

Holmoe could take a page from Price’s playbook.

Price - the Professor Gadget of college football - for the most part made the stronger adjustments. While Cal was conforming to predictable tendencies, Washington State’s offensive unit was popping the occasional big play.

The criticism here is not that Price alternated quarterbacks. It’s the feeling that at a critical juncture after Mencke had thrown a third-quarter 29-yard touchdown pass to get the Cougars to within 17-14 he had one more series on the field before Berney came back.

Momentum backed up like water behind Grand Coulee.

Mencke was back with 9 minutes to go with the game on the line but by then the fire that he had lit had petered out.

Cougar fans are unusually patient. They waited 67 years between Rose Bowl appearances. They’re still bubbling over the ride Price took them on last year, when the Cougs won the Pac-10.

So criticism of this transitional Washington State football team will probably remain as light as the Northern California rain that rendered Memorial Stadium as slippery as this judgment call:

Price wasn’t bad Saturday. He just wasn’t perfect, and that’s what he might have to be to get this team into a minor bowl game.

The monkey that used to come out in November and climb all over his back - remember when the Cougs couldn’t win a game in November? - has been caged, probably for good.

The reality this year is the Cougs may not win a game in October. Forget November.

But so what? The Cougars took the big ride last year. That they need a season or two to retool is no surprise.

At least let it be recorded that as poorly as they performed, they played hard. The defense - Lamont Thompson, James Price, Steve Gleason, Rob Meier, Jonathan Nance, Dee Moronkola - deserved better.

And at least we saw what part of the game plan is for the rest of what shapes up as a long season. Price simply tells his defense to hold ‘em for four quarters and maybe he’ll think of something late.

As the Cougars face the reality of an impossibly difficult next six games, with only Stanford at home in mid-November providing any letup, the creative mind of Mike Price will be challenged.

Whatever he’s cooking up this week has better be good.

Whatever it is has to be better than juggling quarterbacks.