The Cal football team's fall camp came to an official close on Saturday, and if ever there was an anticlimactic ending, this was it.

The big question going into camp-and the only one to a lot of people-had already been resolved two days before, when coach Jeff Tedford announced that Kevin Riley would start the season opener against Michigan State over Nate Longshore. For many, Riley's selection gave the coming season some needed direction.

But it didn't seem to have that effect on some of the players who will line up around him on Aug. 30.

"We have two really good quarterbacks, so whoever the starting quarterback is, they'll be ready and we'll be ready to play," fullback Will Ta'ufo'ou said Saturday. "Whoever it is, either way they're going to get it done."

The team has held the same stance since camp began on Aug. 4. Wideout Nyan Boateng stuck to the line when asked if having a definite starter helps bring the season into focus.

"I mean, not really," Boateng said. "Not within the guys on the team. Every day we went out there, we didn't really know who the starter was. It didn't really bother us, and we just went out there and tried to get some work done."

Riley and Longshore took virtually equal reps with the 1's from the beginning of camp until Thursday. Riley said after the team's first scrimmage that he felt comfortable with all the receivers, and the six or seven receivers that will likely see playing time in 2008 all worked with both quarterbacks during camp.

On top of that, Tedford said that Longshore will play against the Spartans, and that the competition will continue into the season. Boateng and Ta'ufo'ou might have a point.

Still, the quarterback competition wasn't the only story to come out of camp, just as Riley wasn't the only player to state his case for playing time over the last three weeks.

"It was a good camp," Tedford said Saturday. "I think we improved through camp, we had a physical camp, we got a lot of our new guys acclimated to all phases of the game."

Walk-on freshman kicker David Seawright was one of the new guys who made a fast impression, overcoming a shaky start to take over field-goal duties from incumbent Jordan Kay.

On the offensive line, Mitchell Schwartz and Chris Guarnero came out of relative obscurity to win tentative starting jobs-Guarnero at left guard and Schwartz at right tackle. Shane Vereen emerged as the backup to Jahvid Best, while wideout Sean Young-in his sixth year of eligibility at Cal-practiced heavily with the first-team offense and appears to have won a starting spot.

Meanwhile, linebacker Anthony Felder played the best football of his time with the Bears, according to defensive coordinator Bob Gregory, and sophomore Darian Hagan competed well enough to challenge Chris Conte for the No. 2 cornerback slot, which is still up for grabs.

And as Tedford said, it was a notably physical three weeks. Several practices featured scrapping between the offense and defense, including one brief altercation in week two. But the energy was positive as well; players and coaches made a point of being vocal during team drills and a habit of running across the field to pick up teammates after big plays.

"Cal's always been really competitive," senior center Alex Mack said. "But leadership, I think, is doing a good job of getting people to work when things are slow. (Sometimes) we'll have a slow practice with the offense, and then the next series we'll pick it up, be more competitive. That's a sign of leadership."

It's also a good indication that the Bears are itching to go live. With fall camp in the books, Cal now begins game planning for Michigan State. Kickoff, which seemed so far away on Aug. 4, is now right around the corner.

Ta'ufo'ou, in reflecting on the last camp of his collegiate career, started out sounding a lot like Tedford.

"We had a long camp and every day we improved," he said. "We worked to get in shape, worked to mentally focus and really get stronger. Camp went well."

Then he added: "Banging against each other, it gets old sometimes. We're ready to see some new faces across from us."

Tags: CAL FOOTBALL, JEFF TEDFORD, KEVIN RILEY