Day of Reckoning for Rookie Pilot : Bonner Must Guide CS Northridge Through Long Beach Defense in 1st Collegiate Start as Quarterback

The statistics show only 77 pass attempts in two seasons as a reserve, which is reason enough to be somewhat apprehensive. But there is another factor to consider that makes Sherdrick Bonner worthy of a warning label.

When he crouches to take the first snap of Cal State Northridge’s football season today, it will mark not only his first collegiate start but also only the fourth start of his life at the quarterback position.

Caution: This air attack is directed by a pilot-in-training.

Bonner will make his initial attempt to earn his wings against Cal State Long Beach at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach. Game time is noon, high noon for a certain 6-foot-4, 185-pound junior who has been waiting three long years to take over at the controls of CSUN’s offense.

“Every time I think of Sept. 2 I break out in a cold sweat,” Bonner said before a practice this week. “It’s hard to really say how I feel. My mind is completely on Saturday afternoon. I’m kind of speechless.”

No matter, others are more than willing to talk for him. It’s been that way ever since Bonner was a redshirt freshman and was tagged “the franchise” by Coach Bob Burt, who compared his athletic ability to that of Randall Cunningham.

At the time, Cunningham was first-team punter and a seldom-used reserve quarterback for a perennial National Football League doormat called the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Eagles are now playoff contenders and Cunningham is mentioned in the same breath as Marino and Montana among NFL quarterbacks. But Burt says the same label applies.

“He’s a gamer,” Burt said of Bonner, “and, like Cunningham, he’s a big athlete who has played a lot of sports, he has good feet and a lot of innate ability.”

Among those inborn talents, CSUN coaches say, is a knack for avoiding defenders rushing in from his blind side. “It’s like he’s got a time clock in his head and when it goes off he’s says, ‘OK, time to make something happen,’ ” said Pat Degnan, a Northridge assistant who works with the quarterbacks. “A lot of things he’s been God-gifted with. He does things you can’t coach.”

It was Degnan who discovered CSUN’s quarterback-in-the-rough while sifting through film at Azusa High.

Degnan had been instructed to judge Bonner as a potential wide receiver, but Mark Schuster, Azusa’s coach, claimed the team’s quarterback wasn’t good enough to make a fair evaluation. So, to sell his player as an athlete, Schuster showed film of a game with Bonner doing the signal-calling himself.

“I came back and reported what I saw to Coach Burt,” Degnan said. “I said, ‘Coach, I got a quarterback out there that has only played a couple of games, but by the time he leaves here, he could be a great one.’ ”

Burt’s response: Go get him.

“I figured Pat knew what he was doing,” Burt said. “I mean, there are lots of wide receivers who you can win with, but there aren’t a lot of quarterbacks who are 6-4 and can do the things Sherdrick does. When you have a chance to recruit an athlete like that you do it and worry about where he’s going to play later.”

How was Burt to know that the position Bonner wanted to play most was guard?

Guard on the CSUN basketball team.

Shortly after his redshirt season of football had ended, Bonner told the coaches he was trading in his pads for basketball gear. But his decision was short-lived. After some encouragement from Burt and Degnan, a talk with his parents and a conversation with Matador basketball Coach Pete Cassidy, Bonner decided he would play both sports.

Two years later, he quit basketball.

Degnan surmises that it just took a little extra time for Bonner to discover for himself what the football coaches had seen all along: an abundance of untapped potential as a quarterback.

“He’s a good basketball player, but I don’t know if he would have been a great one,” Degnan said. “But in football, with his size and rangy speed, he’s a commodity.”

Assuming, of course, that he lives up to his billing.

“Somebody once said that potential will get you fired, but I don’t think that will be the case with Sherdrick,” Burt said. “He got some quality playing time last year and we’ve seen him do some wondrous things in practice--things that make you go whew, flashes of brillance--but I don’t think anybody has really seen what he can do yet.”

Burt says he is not expecting Bonner to “go out and perform miracles.”

“All he has to do,” Burt said of his quarterback, “is hand the ball off, make the right decisions when he throws the ball and have his wits about him as far as adjustments and audibles.”

Bonner admits that the challenge of making the right moves has been enough to cause more than a few sleepless nights.

“People think football is just lining up and running this or running that, but there’s a lot to learn,” Bonner said. “It took me a long time before I felt like I was field general smart enough to read defenses and make calls. I just wanted to go out there and play, you know, like in high school where no one blitzed. Now I’ve got guys coming at me from all directions.”

And as they chase him, he carries the added weight of great expectations--both stated and implied.

Bonner says he often wondered what he had done to deserve compliments such as the comparison to Cunningham.

“I was honored they would say that,” Bonner said, “but I haven’t done anything to deserve that comparison. I’m penciled in to start, and I’ve worked my tail off to get that far, but beyond that I haven’t accomplished anything.

“The pressure is on. I can feel it. But that’s my situation. I’ll just have to handle it.”

Burt, for one, is confident he will.

In high school, Burt pointed out, Bonner “was third in the state in the high jump at 6-10. Someplace along the line, he had to get down to a jump-off and beat somebody.”

In basketball, Bonner was an All-Southern Section selection. “There had to be a time when he sunk the winning basket at the end of a big game,” Burt said.

In football, he helped Azusa to the playoffs. “I saw him against a kid from San Dimas who was getting a lot of publicity,” Burt said, “and he caught three touchdown passes--just burned the guy.”

And the point of these examples?

“He has all the intangibles of a winner,” Burt said. “Not only does the guy have great athletic ability, but he picks the right time to use it.”

Today, against the heavily favored 49ers, would be such a time.