Quarterbacks in Dogfight to Name Top Gun : Matadors Look for a Leader

In most cases, a football team without an experienced quarterback is as good as a car without a wheel or a yacht without a keel.

Cal State Northridge, then, would seem to be in big trouble next fall when its season opens. The team’s quarterbacks last season were all seniors.

But, in contrast to the L.A. Raiders, who say they have three quarterbacks but really have none, the Matadors don’t have any coming back, but really have three.

Sherdrick Bonner, Rob Huffman and Chris Folsom give Northridge a trio of quarterbacks who the team’s coaches say could successfully engineer the Matador offense. There is, however, a catch:

Huffman is the only one who threw a pass in a game last season, while Bonner redshirted at Northridge and Folsom was academically ineligible.

“Ideally, we’d like to have someone coming back who had some game experience in our system, but right now I think we’ll be OK with any of the three,” said Pat Degnan, quarterbacks coach. “With the talent we have surrounding those guys, we don’t need someone to come in and be a superstar.”

Chris Parker and Danny Fernandez alternated at quarterback the first half of last season before the coaches decided to stick with Parker. The strategy was pretty successful, too. The Matadors finished 8-3 and narrowly missed gaining a Division II playoff berth.

“I’ll tell you right now, we’re going to end up doing the same thing as last year,” Degnan said. “The only question is, with which two?”

There were six quarterbacks out Wednesday for the first day of spring practice, and when they were divided up for drills, guess which three were put together?

“It seems like it’s always us three,” Bonner said. “We’re spending a lot of time together.”

There has been no trace of animosity among the combatants. “I think they all have the right attitude,” said Coach Bob Burt. “The competition should only make them all better.”

Huffman, the only one of the three who didn’t attend classes at Northridge last fall, is favored to win the starting spot. He was a two-year starter at Glendale College and a first-team selection on the JC All-America team as a sophomore.

“The experience factor is big in his favor,” Burt said. “He has to learn our system, but our offense I think is somewhat similar to what he’s used to.”

In two years at Glendale, Huffman passed for 3,087 yards and the Vaqueros went 20-2 and won a Potato Bowl championship.

“Obviously, he’s a winner,” Burt said. “He does whatever it takes to allow his team to win games. He’s been very impressive so far. Some receivers have come back to the huddle and said that the ball is getting there quicker than they think.”

Huffman, 6-3, 205, took recruiting trips to Miami and Louisville, and had an offer from New Mexico, but decided to stay close to home.

“Going to a Division I school was always a goal, but being happy socially and environmentally meant a lot, too,” he said. “Northridge is Division II, but there are a lot of good players here with Division I talent.”

One of them is Bonner, 6-3, 175, who was praised often by coaches last season for his work on the scout teams. Burt at one point took to calling him “the franchise.”

“He’s the perfect specimen for what you want in a quarterback,” Burt said of Bonner. “He’s tall, has very good feet and a very strong arm.”

The only problem is, he’s played football only two years and the equivalent of about two games at quarterback.

At Azusa High, Bonner was more a basketball and track standout. He was a varsity basketball player for three seasons, a 6-10 high jumper . . . and a wide receiver on the football team.

“He was the best thrower we had,” said Mark Schuster, Bonner’s high school coach, “but he threw so hard none of our receivers could catch it.”

He put in just enough time at quarterback for Schuster to put together a recruiting film that drew Burt’s attention.

Bonner said Degnan called him at home during Christmas vacation last year to tell him that Huffman was coming to Northridge.

“I was expecting it, actually,” Bonner said. “We didn’t have anyone else coming back for sure. I just figured, either way it was a good situation. Having him around will make me better. If I start, I start. If I don’t, I’ll still have two more years after he’s gone.”

Folsom, 6-0, 185, was CSUN’s third-string quarterback in 1985 and probably would have been used in the same role last season until experiencing academic trouble. He is the only one of the three not on scholarship.