USA Today: Cal's QB looking for shout-out game

By Jill Lieber, USA TODAY

First, as the All-America quarterback at City College of San Francisco, one of the nation's junior college football powerhouses. Now, as the highly touted rookie at the helm of No. 9-ranked California, off to a 5-0 start for the first time in nine seasons. Saturday, the Golden Bears face their toughest test to date, when they meet No. 16 UCLA (4-0) at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. Secretly, though, Ayoob (pronounced A-yoob) is hoping his nickname, "Booya," his last name spelled backwards, will earn him a little national acclaim — specifically, a big shout out from ESPN's Stuart Scott, who popularized the word booya years ago to emphasize incredible feats in his SportsCenter highlight packages. "I've thought about that since I was young," says Ayoob, now 21. "Stuart Scott always says, 'Booya!' I hope he'll say it for me. Maybe I'll get a chance for him to call it." In just seven weeks, Ayoob, a junior from San Rafael, Calif., has gone from a virtually unknown commodity on the I-A level to a high-profile star in the making for the Golden Bears, who have won their last eight Pac-10 games. Booya. Yes, he has an excellent supporting cast, led by sophomore running backs Marshawn Lynch, who gained 107 yards last week after returning from an injury, and Justin Forsett, who has rushed for 585 yards on 75 carries.   

Cal, UCLA bring streaks to game   

With a victory against No. 16 UCLA on Saturday, No. 9 California would be 6-0 for the first time since the 1950 squad began 9-0 under head coach Pappy Waldorf.  The last time Cal started 5-0, in 1996 under Steve Mariucci, it finished up 6-6.

Cal's current 12-game regular-season winning streak is third longest in the country to Southern California (26) and Virginia Tech (13). UCLA is 4-0 for the first time since 2001 and for the second since 1998. The last time UCLA stood 5-0 was also 2001 under Bob Toledo. Sure, the Bears' defense makes his life easier. Cal ranks first in the Pac-10 in three defensive categories — passing efficiency (92.11), total defense (288.60 yards a game) and scoring (10.60 points a game). Junior linebacker Desmond Bishop, another CCSF transfer, has a team-high 38 tackles.  However, Ayoob still has had to tackle a steep and slippery learning curve, transforming himself into a big-time college quarterback while the world watches.

He enrolled at Cal in January, amidst great fanfare, anointed heir to the graduated Aaron Rodgers. In his two seasons at CCSF, Ayoob threw for 5,790 yards and 55 touchdowns, completing 61.6% of his passes. He also rushed for nine TDs.

Yet Ayoob struggled to learn Cal coach Jeff Tedford's offensive system and was beaten out for the starting job by red-shirt freshman Nate Longshore. When Longshore broke his ankle late in the second quarter of the opener against Sacramento State on Sept. 3, Ayoob was thrown into the fire. He crashed and burned, throwing 10 incomplete passes. Tedford replaced him with third-teamer Steve Levy.  Dan Hayes, CCSF's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, phoned Ayoob that night and told him not to dwell on the episode. "I said, 'You're a special guy. You have a special gift,' " Hayes says. "I said, 'Several weeks down the road, this will all be amusing. Go out and show them the real Joe.' "

Ayoob's father, Joe Sr., who went to Clemson on a basketball scholarship, helped lighten the mood. The day after the debacle, a somber Ayoob drove home to San Rafael in his 1967 Chevrolet Impala to attend a birthday party for his mother Marie. He walked in the door, tossed his sweat pants in the direction of a chair — and missed. "0-for-11," Joe Sr. said, and his son laughed. Ayoob says: "I realized if we're joking about this, it's not a big deal. I knew I could do better than that."

Tedford phoned a few hours later, expressing his confidence in Ayoob and naming him the starter. "I told him, 'Things like that happen from time to time. It's not the way you wanted to start out, but you've got a lot of passes ahead of you,' " Tedford says. "(Hall of Fame quarterback) Dan Fouts told me after he once missed eight passes that (San Diego Chargers head coach) Don Coryell told him, 'Whatever your problem is figure it out because you have 40 more passes to go.' I told Joe, 'Let's just keep working at it.' " Ayoob has always responded well to hard work and difficult challenges. He didn't start playing football until the ninth grade, then led Terre Linda High to the North Coast Section championship games in his junior and senior seasons. Because he ran the option and seldom threw the ball, Ayoob was not recruited by Division I-A colleges. Hayes, a neighbor whose daughter also attended Terre Linda High, offered him a spot at CCSF. Then he proceeded to mold Ayoob into a prolific junior college quarterback, starting from the ground up. "I owe everything to him," Ayoob says. "Without him, I wouldn't be here today." What is Ayoob's best attribute? "The bigger the moment, the bigger Joey plays," Hayes says. Indeed, the week after his baptism by fire, Ayoob completed 17 of 27 passes for 271 yards and four TDs in a 56-17 victory against Washington. He has thrown just two interceptions this season. "When the moment gets pressure packed and gets really big, I tend to focus more," Ayoob says. "I just get more into it, zero in, which causes me to rise above the pressure and make a big play when it's needed." If that's so, why did he miss that chair with his sweatpants? "Must have been a gust of wind," he says.