This Aerial Attack Is No Passing Fancy : College football: For transfer QB Brett Salisbury, life at Palomar has been a dream come true.

Brett Salisbury is a quarterback in a candy store, and his coach, Tom Craft, is Willie Wonka.

Faster than the mythical chocolate factory can produce sweet confections, Palomar College produces sweet-passing quarterbacks.

Salisbury is the latest and greatest in a line of quarterbacks that has helped turn the San Marcos school into the community college version of Brigham Young.

In the pro-set, air-it-out Comet offense, Salisbury this season set two national records and tied another and added five other state or conference records. He giggles when he thinks about his good fortune.

“It really is everything I always wanted, and I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had playing football,” said Salisbury, a 1986 graduate of Orange Glen. “It’s a quarterback’s dream to be in this offense. This is ideal for any quarterback in any situation.”

The situation at Palomar is usually arm cocked, ready to fire. No huddle. Three receivers, four receivers, sometimes five receivers. One running back, sometimes no running backs.

Game plan? Pass, pass, pass.

It begins with Craft, the guru, who still looks much like the quarterback he was in 1975-76 at San Diego State. He’s 6-foot-2, still 190 pounds, blond, tanned, born to throw the ball.

He played under Claude Gilbert at SDSU and was the team captain in 1976, when the Aztecs were 10-1. Craft also learned from Aztec assistants Ted Tollner, now quarterback coach for the Chargers, and Ernie Zampese, offensive coordinator for Don Coryell’s Chargers and now John Robinson’s Los Angeles Rams.

He knows, when recruiting quarterbacks, what strings to pull and what words to say. The magic word is “P-A-S-S.”

“You’ve got to start somewhere, and we were going to establish throwing the football,” Craft said. “It’s a good means of moving the football with the personnel we can get into the program.”

It is also effective in recruiting.

“Having played the position,” Craft said, “I think that’s very important in my approach. And Being the head football coach, I can tell a kid exactly what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it, and I have the numbers to back it up.”

The numbers, compliments of Salisbury, read like this through 10 games: 273 completions in 428 attempts for 3,328 yards, 33 touchdowns and 13 interceptions.

The 273 completions surpassed the previous national mark of 248, set in 1989 by former Palomar quarterback Scott Barrick. The other outright record is for single-season passing yardage (3,328). Salisbury tied the national single-game record for touchdowns--eight--against Grossmont in the game that determined the Mission Conference Southern Division champion. He completed 36 of 50 passes for 501 yards, and five different receivers scored.

By winning the division title, the Comets (6-4) play host to Antelope Valley (8-2) at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Balboa Stadium in the fifth annual Hall of Fame Bowl.

Four losses, you ask? Remember the Chargers when they were fun to watch? Consider these setbacks: 38-21 to Cerritos, 41-40 to Riverside, 38-37 to Mt. San Antonio College and 41-7 to Pasadena. Riverside and Mt. SAC both staged comebacks to take victories away from Palomar.

Like those old Charger teams, the Palomar game revolves around the pass. It has ever since Craft joined the staff 14 years ago.

“(The pass) used to be a way to survive,” Craft said. “It’s a system where you can have not as good players and have some success, and if you do have the players, you can have some real success with it.”

The past three years, the Comets have inherited the services of disenchanted quarterbacks who returned to the North County. Orange Glen’s Duffy Daugherty was miserable at New Mexico, transferred to Palomar and set nine conference records.

Fallbrook’s Barrick was disappointed at SDSU, transferred to Palomar and surpassed eight of Daugherty’s records, excluding the one for most interceptions in a season (22).

Salisbury, whose brother Sean is a quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, transferred from BYU to Palomar and eclipsed all of Barrick’s records.

“I’m sure there’s another one behind me to break my records,” Salisbury said.

But 22-year-old has made it as tough as possible for anyone hoping to wipe the record book clean. Maybe that’s because he’s hungered for football for the better part of three years.

Salisbury realized a lifelong dream when, in the fall of 1986, he was offered a scholarship to attend BYU. He started three games for the junior varsity, then watched six games from the sidelines as a member of the varsity. A Mormon, he then went on a two-year mission to Toronto. By the time he returned in September, 1989, Ty Detmer already had a couple of games under his belt. Salisbury red-shirted the 1989 season and, in spring practice earlier this year, read the writing on the wall: Ty Detmer for the Heisman Trophy.

Side by side, Salisbury compares favorably with Utah’s favorite Ty: Salisbury is 6-3, 190 and has run the 40-yard dash in 4.69; Detmer is 6-1, 170 and has run the 40 in 4.91. Some scouts have told Salisbury that he has a quicker release and a stronger arm than Detmer.

But no one was going to oust Detmer from the BYU lineup, so Salibury went west and put up Detmer-esque numbers of his own.

“I went to Palomar with the intention of playing and having a little success so that I could have the chance to play somewhere else,” Salisbury said.

He should get that chance. He already has taken recruiting trips to Tulane, Alabama and Arizona State. He has one scheduled for Oregon.

He ruled out West Virginia after watching the Mountaineers play on Thanksgiving Day. “I was disappointed in the offense,” he said. “They didn’t throw the ball as much as I like. . . . 35 or 40 times a game.”

And then there’s Miami, which is in San Diego to play the Aztecs. Salisbury, who has two years of eligibility remaining, figures to slip a highlight film to Hurricane Coach Dennis Erickson. Salisbury wouldn’t mind adding his name to the ‘Canes quarterback registry.

“But even more important (than passing) is winning,” Salisbury said. “Our success at Palomar is a tribute to the team effort. I could have the greatest statistics in the world, but if you’re losing, nobody cares, I don’t care. People want to see winners, no doubt.”

He got used to winning early in life. When he was 12, his Escondido National Little League team reached the Little League World Series. It eventually finished fifth, but at one point was the only team in the world that was unbeaten. That success helped keep him from being eclipsed by the shadow of his NFL quarterback-brother.

“Having success young helped me be the person I am today,” Salisbury said. “I don’t have to follow in my brother’s footsteps.

“Sure, it’s nice to be standing on the sidelines at the Holiday Bowl, but it’s a greater feeling to play the game, and there’s nothing that can take away from that feeling. I don’t want it to stop now. I want it to continue.”

That would be perfection, if not confection.