PAC-10 PREVIEW

These teams pass -- or fail
Quarterback play key component in rating conference
Jake Curtis, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, September 1, 2005
Only a few things need to be mentioned regarding the 2005 Pac-10 season:
1. USC is in this conference.
2. The Pac-10 champion will go to the Fiesta Bowl, not the Rose Bowl, unless the conference winner is ranked No. 1 or No. 2.
3. Arizona State and Cal, the two teams given the best shot of unseating USC, don't play each other.
4. Quarterbacks rule the conference.
The last item has become the basis for predicting the Pac-10 champion.
Fact: The All-Pac-10 quarterback has played on a first-place team the past nine years.
Sure, it's helpful to have a topflight running back, but it certainly is not imperative in the Pac-10. Only four of the 24 all-conference running backs the past 12 years played for a first-place team.
Elsewhere, the quarterback does not seem as critical. In the Atlantic Coast Conference, for example, only two of the past six all-conference quarterbacks played for a first-place team.
In the Pac-10, the success of the quarterback pretty much determines the success of the team.
Last season, the best quarterback in the conference (USC's Heisman Trophy winner, Matt Leinart) played for the first-place team. The second-best quarterback (first-round NFL draft pick Aaron Rodgers of Cal) played for the second-place team. The third-best quarterback (third-round NFL draft pick Andrew Walter of Arizona State) played for a team that finished tied for third.
"There is definitely a correlation," Cal coach Jeff Tedford said.
In 2003, Leinart was all-conference and Washington State's Matt Kegel was the second-team choice, and the teams finished first and second, respectively. In 2002, USC's Carson Palmer and Washington State's Jason Gesser tied for all- conference honors, and their teams finished tied for first.
Grade the conference's starting quarterbacks, one through 10, and you'll get a good estimate at the teams' order of finish.
So what do we have this season?
USC has Leinart, whose absurd career touchdown-to-interception ratio (71- to-15) removes any doubt which team has the best quarterback.
After that, every team has quarterback questions, which is why almost any of them could finish second.
Oregon and UCLA seem to have a head start, given their experience at quarterback, but even they have issues.
Oregon's Kellen Clemens was fifth in the Pac-10 in passing efficiency last season, but he will operate a new offense that resembles the spread- option attack run by Utah last season.
"The offense will take this entire year to figure out," Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said.
UCLA's Drew Olson was fourth in the conference in passing efficiency, but he had offseason knee surgery and had to fight off redshirt freshman Ben Olson, a transfer from BYU, to win the job in preseason.
At Arizona State, folks are raving about the game quarterback Sam Keller had against Purdue in the Sun Bowl. That's the San Ramon Valley High grad's only college start, though, so he has yet to prove he can do it game after game.
Tedford manufactured productive quarterback play when none seemed to exist his first two years at Cal, and he'll try to do it again with either Nathan Longshore, the starter for Game 1, or Joseph Ayoob, who figures to share the position with Longshore on Saturday.
Stanford's Walt Harris also has a reputation for molding quarterbacks, and if he can do similar things with Trent Edwards, the Cardinal could be in the thick of things.
Oregon State was a lot better than given credit for last season, and the Beavers might have something if starting quarterback Matt Moore, a transfer from UCLA, is any good, but Drew Olson beat out Moore at UCLA.
Washington State recently picked Alex Brink over Josh Swogger as its starting quarterback, but neither is likely to slow the Cougars' decline. Arizona should have enough quarterback stability in Richard Kovalcheck to score more than last year, when it finished 116th of 117 Division I-A teams in scoring.
Washington was the only team that scored less than Arizona, and new Washington coach Tyrone Willingham has a quarterback problem again: Isaiah Stanback, who was named the starter Wednesday, completed only 33.8 percent of his passes last season, and Oregon transfer Johnny DuRocher, who competed for the starting job, is ineligible for the first three game for violating transfer rules. However, Willingham far exceeded expectations in his first seasons at Stanford and Notre Dame when both schools had quarterback issues.