ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING.

Byline: Bob Clark The Register-Guard

EL PASO, Texas - One more football game. Right?

`It's almost as if I'm gone already, but I have to keep the mentality that I have one more game to play,' UO quarterback Jason Fife said. `I still have to stay focused, but it's almost like I'm moving on already.'

Moved, anyway. To a definite role as the backup quarterback, rather than in a rotation with starter Kellen Clemens as it was for the first 10 games of the season.

To a new position, too, as a wide receiver with that group thinned to three scholarship players again.

Fife as a receiver?

`He's a good athlete, he could play a lot of positions besides quarterback,' said Dan Ferrigno, the UO receivers coach. `God knows he understands the routes and what everybody is supposed to do.

`It's just the little things, the breaks, the adjustments you have to make. He hasn't had a chance to get a lot of work on that, but he's such a good athlete he does a lot of it naturally.'

Fife did enter the Oregon State game as a receiver, for one play. And he was almost late for that after rushing to remove his headset and its accompanying paraphernalia, which he wears to hear instructions from coaches on the field and in the press box so he can signal plays into Clemens.

`We didn't really think about getting that stuff off,' Fife said. `I couldn't figure out how to get it off, and the coaches were yelling `get in there.' '

Fife did, much to the consternation of the OSU secondary.

`They were all pointing at him,' Ferrigno said, laughing. `They were worried about him.'

Fife said the cornerback covering him was up in press coverage, then backed off yelling `12's in the game, 12's in the game.'

The pass went elsewhere, and Fife returned to the bench, where he spent most of the final two games of the season. He's still the holder on field goals and point-after attempts, and he's sometimes used as the upback, or `personal protector' for the punter.

But other than special teams or a special situation, does he figure to be on the field much Wednesday, when Oregon meets 24th-ranked Minnesota in the Sun Bowl? Is he likely to take a snap under center?

`I want to say no, simply because it would be kind of detrimental to Kellen to play me right before I leave,' Fife said. `I'm preparing myself for a backup mentality, but with the mentality that I'm only one play from going into the game if I have to.'

Though Fife ranks 10th on Oregon's career lists for passing yardage (3,689) and total offense (3,978), he didn't start once during his senior season. Even his shared-time role ended in the 11th game against UCLA, when Clemens played until mop-up time in the final minutes brought Fife onto the field.

It resulted in the one time this season when Fife publicly showed his unhappiness with the situation, declining interview requests with the explanation `I'll talk when I've done something. I didn't do anything in this game.'

Coaches apologized, for not telling Fife prior to the game he probably wouldn't play a significant role. `I guess they didn't want to hurt me,' Fife said.

It had to hurt anyway, with family and friends at the game in the Rose Bowl for Fife's final trip to his home area, and limited to handing off in the final minutes. What was he going to say to the media? Something he'd regret?

Fife's most compelling public comment on his diminished role as a senior was at the season-ending banquet, when he acknowledged he'd nearly quit the team in response to his situation. Not once, but on several occasions.

`At the beginning of the season, back in the spring when they first told me there was a chance I might not play at all, throughout the season when I'd have those ups and downs,' Fife ticked them off. `I'd wonder, is it worth playing anymore?

`Ultimately, I decided at the beginning of the season I'd be here for my teammates, no matter what. It always came down to that decision. I love so many of these guys that much, I didn't want to leave them.'

Behind the scenes, if not on the field, Fife was a major contributor to Oregon's turnaround.

When teammates thought things were going bad for the Ducks, they would see Fife continuing to practice as if nothing was different, and offering a positive and upbeat outlook on the situation.

`A lot of guys noticed that and felt highly of him for it,' UO offensive lineman Nick Steitz said. `He very easily, as a senior who gets his spot taken, could shut down and say `the heck with it, I don't need this.' Especially when we went through that stretch where we were getting our butts kicked, he easily could have hung his head and sulked it up, but he didn't.'

That wouldn't be Fife. Back when Joey Harrington and A.J. Feeley were dueling for the starting quarterback position, and everybody around them was as on edge as they were about the competition, it was the freshman Fife who was told by then UO offensive coordinator Jeff Tedford to `lighten things up'

`What's that mean?' Fife asked.

`Be upbeat in meetings,' Tedford told him. Keep everybody loose on the field.

`I could feel when I did that, it created positive energy,' Fife said. `Everyone felt better, everyone felt more relaxed.

`I always felt the team did the best with that kind of atmosphere. Coaches are always on us, so there has to be someone who balances things out and puts things in perspective and tries to put a smile on somebody.'

That was Fife. In a couple of practices where coaches were growing more impatient with young receivers suffering through the drops as they struggled with learning the system, it was Fife who would joke with them instead of offering more criticism.

`They'd crack a smile and go back and do something good,' Fife said. `Sometimes when the coaches are the disciplinary father figure, I can be the mother figure and tell the guys, `it'll be all right. Forget about it. Life moves on.' '

All that contributed to Fife's teammates voting him as the most inspirational Duck this season. Of the 16 previous UO players selected for the Gonyea Award, only two others were reserves in the season teammates voted them most inspirational.

UO coach Mike Bellotti called that `the greatest tribute to Jason Fife. That is a comment on how he handled the whole situation this year. He wants to win, he's put his role secondary to the team.'

Fife was `surprised' at being voted the most inspirational because `there were so many guys on the team that I looked up to.'

What he forgot was how many teammates held him in that same regard.

`To me, the most inspirational player is someone who has a voice everyone listens to,' UO rover Marley Tucker said. `After we'd had two or three losses, it's someone who picked us up for the Stanford game.'

That would be Fife, Tucker said.

`Everybody listens to Fife, everybody wants to hear what Fife has to say,' Tucker said. `For Jason Fife to have the attitude he had this season ... it's not all about him, it's about the team.'

CAPTION(S):

Oregon's Jason Fife and his father, Brad, leave the field after the Ducks defeated Michigan early in the season. Fife has had a lot of ups and downs during his senior season, but his ability to stay positive earned him the team's most inspirational award. T h e S u n B o w l