IN A HOLDING PATTERN : College football: Former Canyon quarterback Ken Sollom took his golden arm to Michigan with heroic aspirations, but thus far he has had to settle for an anonymous role on special teams.

Anyone who watched quarterback Ken Sollom buzz footballs onto the chests of his receivers three years ago at Canyon High will not be surprised to learn that on New Year’s Day he will don his University of Michigan uniform and march into the Rose Bowl prepared to do battle with USC.

As a senior in high school, Sollom passed for 2,720 yards and 28 touchdowns. At 6-foot-3 and 195 pounds, he is now considerably bigger and stronger than during those prep days when his coach said simply, “Ken Sollom has a golden arm.”

Days before the Rose Bowl, Sollom must be a proud young man.

“Sometimes, I’m embarrassed,” Sollom said.

He is somewhat sheepish because he no longer stands tall in the pocket and sends laser beams downfield with that golden arm. As a matter of fact, his new job in football doesn’t involve throwing anything. Nor, come to think of it, does it even allow him to stand.

In his new role, Sollom lines up behind the center, one knee planted on the turf. He takes the snap, just like in the old days, but now he simply takes the ball, delicately places one end of it into the grass and puts his right index finger atop the other end to prevent the ball from toppling.

Then, teammate J. D. Carlson takes a few quick steps and crushes the ball with his foot, missing the fingers at the end of the golden arm by scant millimeters.

“When I went to Michigan, I always figured I’d return to play in the Rose Bowl,” said Sollom, who will be making his second appearance for Michigan in that postseason game. “But somehow I always figured it would be as their quarterback, not as the holder for the placekicker.”

The holder for the kicker? Sollom? The same kid who was, after his brilliant senior season in high school, named Golden League Player of the Year and who attracted waves of scholarship offers from across the nation? The same kid who opened his final high school season by passing for 708 yards and 10 touchdowns in just three games?

“It’s the same guy,” said Canyon Coach Harry Welch, who visited Sollom during a Michigan practice in Newport Beach earlier this week. “I watched four very good quarterbacks throwing for Michigan at practice, and none of them threw the ball as well as I know Kenny Sollom can. He is a beautiful passing machine.”

Who is, however, in cold storage.

Sollom, who was wooed heavily by, among others, USC, UCLA, Stanford, Arizona and BYU, redshirted as a freshman. Last year he played at quarterback for Michigan for brief stints in two games. He completed two of three passes for 13 yards but played in every game as the holder.

This year, his passing statistics improved dramatically. He completed two of three passes for 28 yards. And he was the holder in nearly every kicking situation.

He has two years of eligibility remaining, but there are indications that his stock as a Michigan quarterback may never rise much above its current value.

The reasons are threefold: Elvis Grbac, Wilbur Odom and Doug Musgrave, fellow underclassmen quarterbacks who, in the eyes of the Michigan coaching staff, are at least the equal of Sollom.

Grbac, a freshman from Ohio, has vaulted to the head of the list of likely successors to senior Michael Taylor. When Taylor went out with a back injury after a season-opening loss to Notre Dame, the 6-foot-5 Grbac stepped in and led the Wolverines to four consecutive impressive wins.

Grbac is considered to have a virtual lock on Michigan’s quarterback job for the next three years. And close behind him could be Musgrave, a freshman from Colorado who earned consensus All-American honors as a senior, passing for 3,147 yards and 44 touchdowns.

Sollom might be left to fight it out with Odom--who will be a senior next year--for the third-string job.

Sollom is confident that he can compete with his three rivals.

“After this year, with Taylor gone, there will be a lot of competition,” he said. “I figure I’ll be right in it.”

But the driving ambition to be a roaring collegiate success that he had when he left high school seems to have waned.

“If I never become the starting quarterback, it will be a disappointment to me,” he said. “But I came here because of the college, too, not just for football. I’m on my way to getting a communications degree from the University of Michigan and that’s very important to me now. When I left high school, I wasn’t thinking about a degree. But now, I see the possibilities.”

And so the best quarterback Canyon High has ever seen, and one of the best prep quarterbacks California has ever seen, may simply fade away into the real world with a communications degree in a few years.

But in the change, his former coach sees a shining example of perspective.

“Kenny could transfer,” Welch said. “A lot of schools would kill to get this kid. He could whine about what’s happened to him at Michigan and just pack up and go looking for a different football team. But I’m glad he has decided to stay.

“So often today we criticize athletes for ignoring their education, and now it seems people are putting pressure on Kenny to consider just the opposite. He knows he could transfer and play football, but he has said no. He has made a commitment to the University of Michigan and he’s going to honor it. I admire that. It’s a breath of fresh air.”

And in a collegiate career that has given Sollom just six opportunities to crank up the golden arm, he says he still has found highlights. One came early this year against UCLA when Carlson, the Michigan kicker, banged a 24-yard field goal with one second remaining in the game at the Rose Bowl to give Michigan a 24-23 victory.

“I saw a picture of J. D. kicking that field goal,” Sollom said. “The ball was just leaving the ground. And I said, ‘Hey, that’s my finger.’ ”

The young man with the rocket arm smiled. He knows he is capable of more. He knows what strength lies coiled in that right arm. And he also knows he might never get a chance to unleash it again.

But even though he said he has accepted that possibility, he sometimes wonders what went wrong.

“In two years, I might be the starting quarterback in another Rose Bowl,” he said. “Maybe. Or maybe not. I know now that to get to that point, you have to be a lot of things, and one of them is lucky.

“A few years ago I had it all planned: Go to Michigan, star in a few Rose Bowls, get drafted by the NFL. I really thought it would be easy. I really figured it would just go like that if I was willing to put in the effort. Well, I put in the effort. And now, I’m the holder for the placekicker. And I’m disappointed.”

Some of his biggest supporters from his glory days, however, have not lost any of their admiration for him.

“This kid could throw the football like no high school quarterback I have ever seen,” Welch said. “He was just so gifted. And because of that gift, he got a chance to obtain a great education and to meet some really great people.

“If he never again becomes a star in football, it was still that golden arm that has allowed him to chase a fuller and richer life. And he has honored his commitment to that. For that, I am exceptionally proud of Ken Sollom.”