A brusque, middle-aged pediatrician in Huntington Beach, Calif., may have unwittingly paved
Jason Fife’s career path.
“That’s probably where I developed my fear of needles,” the Oregon backup quarterback says with a smile. “He was an older guy, and he’d come at me with these big needles, and I’d be like, Don’t prick me there!” Fife decided then that a pediatrician, in addition to boasting a breadth of medical knowledge, should dole out shots and empathy in equal doses. He connects well with kids, he says, and after he’s earned a bachelor’s degree – he’s an undergraduate general science student – he wants to attend medical school.
“Sometimes it’s frustrating, because I’ll probably relearn everything I’m learning here in med
school,” Fife says. “But you have good days and bad, and you just have to have a goal and keep
moving forward.”
Just like football.
Fife has spent his Oregon career thus far waiting in the wings. He jokes that his parents, Bradley
and Susanne, would attend more games, but they’re not sure it’s worth the trip from Southern
California, because Fife is usually on the sidelines.
But make no mistake, he’s having a great time. When he’s not studying biology texts or opposing
defenses, he likes to hang with his teammates.
He golfs with Joey Harrington, Wesly Mallard, Justin Peelle and Kevin Mitchell, and says
Harrington is probably the best among them – but only because Harrington possesses a distinct
advantage.
“Yeah, he’s had a couple lessons to work on his swing,” Fife says, smiling. “I like to think that lessons
give him an edge.”
On the slopes, though, Fife is king. He loves to carve through drifts of powder at Mount Hood
Meadows. He’s snowboarded since his sophomore year at Temescal Canyon High School in
Lake Elsinore, Calif., because skiing “wasn’t my cup of tea.”
He also recently picked up wakeboarding; snowboarding is water-bound blood relative. He took
a trip with Mitchell to Arizona last summer and says he spent more time in the water than on it, but
had a great time.
Barreling down a mountain run or clinging to a rope behind a fast boat, is Fife ever worried about
getting hurt? Snowboarding and wakeboarding aside, he knows football is dangerous. He’s
watched other guys suffer season-ending injuries and wears a large, black knee brace in practice to
mitigate the effect of a direct hit that could sprain or tear his MCL or ACL. But he’s not worried. He’s
convinced a football player can’t be.
“If you worry about getting hurt, and you play like you’re worried about getting hurt, you’ll get hurt,”
Fife says. “When you play, you just have to go out there and give it your all. That’s what it’s all
about.”