Opinion

By Jeff Welsch
Staff writer

CORVALLIS — As Derek Anderson strode into a converted Valley Football Center meeting room to meet the press, an Oregon State official smiled and thrust a final statistics sheet into his midsection.

Anderson, wearing powder-blue basketball trunks and an orange baseball cap, smiled back, shook his head and otherwise acted as if the papers were powdered with anthrax.

"I don't want to read nothin' anymore," he said like the country boy he is, continuing toward the impending line of generally friendly fire.

Small wonder.

Whether it's a statistic sheet (mostly good Saturday, actually), sports section (mostly bad lately) or Internet message board (mostly ugly), the reviews have ranged from indifferent to downright snarly since the 6-foot-6 junior quarterback tossed five interceptions in a 16-14 loss to Fresno State.

Welcome to Derek Anderson's new world.

You walk onto the field before the game against New Mexico State even starts Saturday and you're the target of F-bombs from the relentlessly classy Beaver Dam student section.

You make one poor throw, and you're booed.

You allow a ball slick with the blood of a teammate to slip out of your hand, allowing a defensive touchdown, and you're booed some more.

You even make a wise decision — throwing a ball into the turf on a well-covered screen pass — and you're still booed.

On this glorious Saturday, with an 18th consecutive Reser Stadium sellout craving an offensive eruption to assuage the wounds of another bitter loss to FSU, you probably would've been booed for signing autographs for kids on the way to the locker room.

Indeed, for these past eight days, it has been difficult to fathom that these were the same orange-bathed folks who were giddy with anticipation when you spurned Florida State and other national powers to stay in state and cast your lot with the Beavers three years ago out of Scappoose.

By now, readers who weren't among the 35,831 on hand or didn't see the highlights at 11 might surmise that Anderson had stumbled and bumbled his way through a second consecutive Beaver defeat.

No.

OSU (2-1) came away with a functional 28-16 victory over a game but outmanned Aggie outfit.

Anderson was 17-for-30 passing for 233 yards and had a one-yard TD run, after which he flipped the ball with revealing purpose.

Yes, he threw two interceptions, but on one he was belted as he released the ball and on the other he had a miscommunication with his receiver.

"It was good to get last week out of my system," he said. "It was a tough week for me."

The performance was greeted hopefully by his teammates and coaches, who no doubt view Anderson's efforts with greater urgency amid the uncertainty of tailback Steven Jackson's ailing left knee, but for anxious fans the jury is out with no eminent evidence of encouragement.

Nothing short of perfection Saturday would've erased the venom from the FSU loss, and even then the (un)faithful likely would still wait until the first Pacific-10 Conference game against Arizona State on Sept. 27 before pronouncing Anderson the Carson Palmer they expect him to be.

Last week's unprecedented barbs stung so much that Anderson's father, Glen, was moved to react to the fundamentalist wing of fandom, otherwise known as Internet message board posters, with a scathing rejoinder to the Web site.

Others also rushed to his side.

"It's during those times that you know who your friends are," Anderson said, noting that he received a pile of supportive letters — these he did read — from the rational, mainstream wing of the school's supporters.

"Everybody said, ‘Just go out there and play and don't listen to what the people say.' "

So that's just what he did, though one wonders how he avoided performance anxiety when every move is scrutinized under a high-powered microscope.

He prepared and practiced with purpose above and beyond his normal intensity. He wore special armbands that signified his determination to "play hard and have fun."

He circled wagons consisting of family and friends and stayed away from all reading material except playbooks and textbooks.

The result was a solid effort, nothing destined for a scrapbook but certainly nothing worth the chorus of boos that were striking to those of us old-timers unaccustomed to seeing the caliber of athlete Anderson is and the margin of victory OSU is producing.

The Beavers will need more from him, of course, and he knows it.

"I need to get better," he concedes.

Whether he will, nobody knows.

He may never be Carson Palmer.

He might even never be Jonathon Smith.

But he's all we've got, and in the end, an underachieving Derek Anderson will still provide far more readable statistics sheets than any pre-Smith quarterback since that fella named Baker.

Sports editor Jeff Welsch can be reached at 758-9518 or jeff.welsch@lee.net