Bears put trust in Ayoob

Just when it appeared that California had found another star quarterback, the Golden Bears’ season took a dramatic turn.

Redshirt freshman Nate Longshore, having won the job in camp, broke his leg against Sacramento State in the opener and will miss the season.

That puts Joseph Ayoob, a junior college transfer, at the helm. When Ayoob first signed with Cal in February, the general wisdom had him as the starter anyway. But Cal fans may be a little jittery these days, and one need look no further than the box score from Saturday to know why.

In relief of Longshore, Ayoob went a dismal 0 for 10 before being pulled in favor of Steve Levy, the third-stringer who played fullback last season.

“I guess I was a little shocked that Joe struggled like he did,” head coach Jeff Tedford said. “He gets thrown into a two-minute drill where we’re throwing it down the field, not running it. He made good decisions. He was a little off with some of the throws, had a couple dropped balls and it just kind of mounted on him.”

After the game, Tedford didn’t wait long to name Ayoob his starter, calling him into the office the next day to calm the junior down.

“It was important to let him know that we had confidence in him and he’d be fine,” Tedford said. “Once the comfort level gets there with him I think he’ll be fine because he does have a lot of the intangibles it takes to play quarterback.”

Levy was originally recruited as a quarterback, and switched positions last year to try and earn playing time. Behind him is a walk-on.

So the focus is squarely on Ayoob, especially with an early conference opener this week against Washington.

“We’ve got to give him a chance,” Tedford said. “We’ve had Kyle Boller here, we’ve had Aaron Rodgers here. So people get used to almost perfection.”

Katrina fundraiser

Arizona State, in turning this weekend’s road game at LSU into a home game, is trying to help fund the hurricane relief effort in Louisiana. LSU was unable to host the game because of the ongoing operations in Baton Rouge and agreed to move the game to Tempe.

The Sun Devils are selling tickets at $30 apiece, with all money not dedicated to LSU travel and game operational expenses going to Katrina victims.

“Thirty dollars a seat times 70,000 seats – do the math, we can raise a lot of money here,” Sun Devil head coach Dirk Koetter said. “We have all the resources here to have the game and hopefully sell it out.”

Since LSU is losing a home game, the Sun Devils agreed to add a third game to the series. This year will be a one-shot deal, ASU will again host LSU in 2008 and then will return to Baton Rouge at a later date.

Boise’s blues

Oregon State head coach Mike Riley said he doesn’t expect to see the same Boise State team that got pounded in the season-opener at Georgia this weekend.

“Boise, they’ve got too good a tradition and too good a program to dwell too much on that last game,” Riley said. “They went into a hornet’s nest. I watched that tape and Georgia is really, really good.”

The Broncos scored 50-plus points on OSU last season and quarterback Jared Zabransky – who threw four interceptions in 15 passes and was pulled before halftime in Georgia – had a field day.

“He killed us last year taking the ball, pulling it down from the pass and running,” Riley said.

Notes

UCLA running back Maurice Drew played about half of the opener against San Diego State because of cramps but head coach Karl Dorrell said he’ll be fine for this week. … USC head coach Pete Carroll dismissed any notion of LenDale White being upset about his carries at Hawaii. Multiple reports came out of the USC locker room describing White’s apparent frustration. “LenDale had 13 carries and Reggie (Bush) had 12,” Carroll said. “Next week it could be completely different.”