The record could be broken as easy as 123.

That is how far Mater Dei quarterback Matt Barkley is from setting the Orange County career passing yardage record. Barkley needs 123 yards to breaking the county record held by Todd Marinovich.

Marinovich passed for 9,182 yards in the late 1980s, a figure the later USC and NFL quarterback compiled over two years at Mater Dei and his final two at Capistrano Valley. Barkley, like Marinovich a four-year starter, is at 9,060 going into the Monarchs' CIF-Southern Section Pac-5 first-round playoff game Friday against Long Beach Jordan at Santa Ana Stadium.

Barkley has not had a perfect season; his 14 interceptions is the second-highest figure in the county. In the Monarchs' 24-21 loss to Orange Lutheran two weeks ago, he did not look completely comfortable in the pocket, and a couple of passes looked as if they were targeted more to avoid defenders than hit the receivers. Still, he is No. 3 in county passing yardage, with 2,502, and when he is on his game, there is nobody better.

Some time Friday, Barkley's name will be on top of the passing yardage list. Given the quarterbacks that have come through county football, players such as Steve Beuerlein, John Huarte, Rob Johnson, Matt Leinart, Carson Palmer and Mark Sanchez to name just a few prominent ones, for Barkley to rank above them in yardage will be quite an accomplishment.

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:

• Mater Dei football coach Bruce Rollinson is one victory away from being the seventh in county history to reach 200 career Orange County football coaching victories. The first six to 200: John Barnes of Los Alamitos; Mike Marrujo of Valencia; Bob Johnson of Mission Viejo; Bill Craven of Pacifica; Dick Hill of Santa Ana Valley, Santa Ana and Orange; and Terry Henigan of Irvine. Barnes, Marrujo, Johnson and Henigan still are coaching, and all four have their teams in playoff games this week.

• Laguna Hills, which plays Artesia of Lakewood in a Southern Division first-round game Friday, is the only county football team coming into the first round of the playoffs after a bye week. Hawks coach Bruce Ingalls said, "I don't see why there is any difference to having the bye week when we did. To me, a bye week is a bye week. We've always played well coming off the bye, anyway."

• Discussion continues, in the e-mails and the voice mails and the message boards, about the way the Sunset League broke up the five-way tie in football (school names late Friday night were placed in a bowl, and the order of how the names were drawn became the order of the league's playoff representation in the playoffs). The names of two teams that were in the final county top 10, Edison and Newport Harbor, were not drawn and neither is in the playoffs. With no provision for a five-way tie in the league constitution, and with any debate about which teams most deserved go to the playoffs a potentially long and fruitless one, there does not seem to be any quicker or better way to sort out the mess and get the league's list of playoff representatives to the CIF-Southern Section office before the section's 10 a.m. deadline Saturday.

• There has been a presale at Tesoro this week for tickets to the Los Alamitos-Tesoro football game, a unique game in which Barnes of Los Alamitos will coach against his son Brian's team, Tesoro, Friday at Tesoro in a Pac-5 first-round game. There could be tickets available at Tesoro's on-campus stadium, which has a capacity of 4,000 since additional seating was added, and remained, for the Titans' home game against Mission Viejo. We will have a ticket update on ocvarsity.com; Cox3, available on many south-county cable systems, will carry taped coverage of the game Friday at 11 p.m. and on Saturday at 2 p.m.

• Yes, mom and dad, your football-playing sons are telling you the truth if they say they have practice on Thanksgiving morning.

• Yes, it is interesting that in a league called the Trinity League there has been a three-way tie for two years in a row.

Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com