TEN EVENTS, ONE PASSION FOR ANDERSON.

Byline: Karen Crouse

SACRAMENTO - If cynicism has replaced track and field as your favorite sport, if your heart hardens a little more every time a prominent name fails a drug test, have we got the athlete for you. Avery Anderson is the antidote to the greed and immodesty and performance-enhancing drug-taking that has poisoned so many people on the sport.

Anderson, a receiver at UCLA in the mid-1990s, is using money he tucked away during a dalliance in the NFL to bankroll his life's passion. That would be the decathlon, track and field's version of ``Survivor,'' a 10-event test of stamina and sanity that thins the field of contenders over two days like some Darwinian selection process until one disheveled winner emerges.

The first time Anderson competed in a decathlon, a few weeks ago during a meet on the Cal State Northridge field where he trains, he surpassed the Olympic Trials qualifying standard. Other athletes who have gathered here for the U.S. Olympic selection meet might have higher profiles and lower odds of qualifying to compete in Sydney. But arguably nobody who will grace Cal State Sacramento's Hornet Field over the next 10 days has purer intentions.

``When I was at UCLA, the decathlon was something as foreign to me as the steeplechase,'' Anderson said the other day. An accomplished high hurdler and high jumper as a collegian, ``I had it in my mind even then that I wanted to do the decathlon some day. I just looked at it as the ultimate challenge.''

Anderson, 27, was holed up in the Indianapolis Colts' training camp in Anderson, Ind., in the summer of 1996 when decathlete Dan O'Brien struck Olympic gold in Atlanta. Anderson was an undrafted rookie trying to make a mighty impression on the Colts, and yet he couldn't ignore the impact O'Brien's performance was having on him.

``I wanted to be on the track (in Atlanta) really bad,'' Anderson said.

Right then and there he drew up a master play for himself. It was an end-around run. Eventually, Anderson was going to cut against the grain and leave himself terribly exposed.

Ultimately, he was going to choose the decathlon over football.

``I said to myself I only wanted to play football a few years, make some money and then come back to the decathlon,'' Anderson said.

Ultimately arrived sooner than he had planned. Later in his rookie training camp, he caught a pass and fell awkwardly to the ground and his back compressed like a crushed aluminum can.

It would be three months before Anderson could stand up straight without pain rocketing up to his temples. He would spend the 1996 season on the sidelines. The Colts, who had signed him to an NFL minimum contract his first week in training camp, would continue paying him, but he never played a down for them.

Anderson invested his money well, and, at length, he took stock in his future. He devoted his days to working himself back into shape, not for another shot at the NFL but so he could put the shot and throw the javelin and the discus and jump long and high and run the hurdles, the 400 meters, the 100 and the 1,500 and (pole) vault into national prominence.

His friends in football thought he had gone stark-raving mad. If you're fit enough to train for the decathlon, they counseled him, surely you're fit enough to play football somewhere, in Canada or in Europe if not in the NFL.

His friends obviously didn't get it.

Neither did the Home Depot manager who interviewed Anderson for a part-time job. He was happy to hire him, even if he couldn't, for the life of him, understand why a guy who once made the NFL minimum was willing to work for little more than minimum wage.

``I question myself every time I have to buy a javelin or $100 specialty shoes,'' Anderson said, laughing.

What can he say? He's hooked. ``I love what I'm doing. As hard as it has been to learn all these new events, I wouldn't go back to football for anything.''

Anderson amassed 7,952 points in his decathlon debut, the 10th-best mark among the Trials entrants. While not as impressive as Jim Thorpe's first effort (he won the gold medal at the 1912 Olympics and set a world record), Anderson's performance put the decathlon world on notice.

There's a new kid on the track and for all his inexperience, Anderson can say he has competed in as many decathlons since the 1996 Olympics as O'Brien, who is back after being beset by injuries and ennui.

Anderson realizes he is a long shot to earn one of the three Olympic berths. He figures 8,500 points will do it. Where he'll find those extra 548 points, he's not sure. But, hey, stranger things have happened.

Anderson has been training for the decathlon longer than two-time Olympic gold medalist Bob Mathias, who qualified for the 1948 U.S. Olympic team three months after taking up the event. And Anderson's background isn't all that different from Jim Bausch's. Bausch was a football star at Kansas who took up the decathlon and struck gold at the 1932 Olympics in L.A.

If Anderson makes the Olympic team, fantastic. And if he doesn't? ``If it doesn't happen for me, if I bomb, I won't feel like I failed,'' Anderson said. ``I'll just happily go back to training and go back to work at Home Depot. Whatever happens, I have peace of mind. I'm doing something I love.''

U.S. TRACK & FIELD CHAMPIONSHIPS

Today's key events: Men's and women's 10,000-meter finals; first four events of heptathlon; men's and women's 100-meter first round.

Local connection: Shelia Burrell (CSUN assistant coach), heptathlon; Deena Drossin (Agoura High), 10,000 meters; Jerome Davis (USC), 400; Marion Jones (Thousand Oaks High), 100; Inger Miller (USC), 100; Angela Williams (USC), 100; Torri Edwards (USC), 100; Marla Runyan (Camarillo High), 1,500; Regina Jacobs (Campbell Hall), 1,500; Gail Devers (UCLA), 100.

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo: (color) Decathlete Avery Anderson

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer

Illustration by Eric Barrow

Box: U.S. track & field championships (see text)