SportingNews: Coach's son Riley takes over as Cal's QB

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Kevin Riley, the head coach's baby boy, fetched the loose footballs and carried the water bottles to the huddle. But his time as a youngster around the Beaverton (Ore.) High Beavers also included a quarterback apprenticeship that has served him well this summer.  "All that time around my dad, watching his team and watching film," Riley said this week by telephone, "I think football just came easier to me. I understood things more quickly."  Riley, a highly touted recruit out of the Portland area in 2005, beat out fifth-year senior Nate Longshore to win California's starting quarterback job. His first action as the full-time starter will come Saturday, when the Bears host Michigan State in a nationally televised prime-time game.

Riley learned the news last week around lunchtime and immediately called his dad, Faustin, who remains a high school assistant. Fittingly, Faustin Riley was on the practice field and ignored his cell phone.  "Then one of my other sons came over to me and said, 'Dad, I think you want to take this one,'" Faustin Riley said. "Just knowing how hard Kevin worked, it's a dream come true."  The dream, shared by father and son, stretches back to Kevin's kindergarten years. He'd spend his elementary school afternoons discussing coverages with dad, and he stayed true to playing quarterback even in eighth grade, when his 5-5, 107-pound frame made him a better fit for the soccer field.  His small size helped give him an "L" in his first quarterback competition; as a high school sophomore, he lost the Beaverton starting gig to Greg Laybourn, now a safety at Oregon State. Soon, though, his body grew -- and with it his talents as a quarterback. Cal's connection with Riley began when coaches saw him at a 2005 combine, and it blossomed when he was selected to attend that summer's Elite 11 Quarterback Camp.

He redshirted in 2006 before replacing a banged-up Longshore midway through last season. He made his first start for then-second ranked Cal against Oregon State. Down three in the final minute, Cal drove into field-goal range and ran out of timeouts. That's when Riley took off on an ill-advised scramble, failed to get out of bounds, and time expired. That night, he took a call from his dad.  "He said, 'I'm so proud of how you played out there,'" Kevin Riley said. "'But, boy, did you screw up.'"  Most of the mistakes went away this summer, which began with Riley and Longshore neck-and-neck for the No. 1 spot. Riley proved more consistent throughout the offseason and earned coach Jeff Tedford's nod over Longshore, who had made 26 starts over the past three years.

"It's a work in progress with Kevin," Tedford said on this week's Pac-10 teleconference. "Every snap is a learning experience. But he's very focused, and he's getting more comfortable by the day."  He'll need to be comfortable Saturday night, when he stares down a Big Ten defense and leads a group that lost playmakers DeSean Jackson and LaVelle Hawkins. He'll have one extra friend, though -- for the first time in Kevin's college career, Faustin will watch from the stands.  "We've been looking forward to this day," Faustin Riley said of his son's start. "It's going to be a pretty neat experience."