Gold Rusher : FORMER CSUN PLAYER DAVED BENEFIELD WAS A LONGSHOT TO MAKE THE NFL, BUT TODAY HE’S A 49ER

Check the roster. His name appears at the very bottom, down at No. 99.

The fact is, Daved Benefield plays for the San Francisco 49ers. He plays second-string linebacker and special teams. That means he will be on the field for the kickoff of today’s NFC divisional playoff game at Green Bay.

Still, it does not seem possible.

In the late 1980s, Benefield played two solid, if unspectacular, seasons at Cal State Northridge. He was working at his family’s grocery store for a year before he decided to head north, to the Canadian Football League, to give the game one more try.

Now, according to the roster, he has resurfaced as a 28-year-old rookie in the NFL. Benefield himself is at a loss to explain.

“It’s strange,” he said. “I almost have to wonder, ‘What kind of dream am I in?’ ”

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Don’t look for an answer in the raw numbers. Plenty of coaches have tried and failed.

Coaches tend to like numbers, height and weight, stopwatch times for the 40-yard dash. All this helps them classify players. But at 6 feet 4 and 231 pounds, Benefield defies classification.

“Not quite big enough to be a down lineman,” said Bob Burt, his coach at Northridge. “Not fast enough to play the defensive backfield.”

Such players are called “tweeners” and they are an enigma.

So no one recruited Benefield out of tiny Maranatha High in Altadena. At Glendale College, the coaching staff shifted him from free safety to strong safety. At Northridge, Burt tried him at weakside linebacker.

In his senior year, Benefield landed at strongside linebacker. He showed a natural instinct for getting to the football, intercepting five passes and making 65 tackles for the season. Those numbers earned him All-Western Football Conference honors.

Still, the numbers did not quite add up.

Benefield recalled: “When I was getting ready to leave Northridge, [Burt] told me, ‘You’re not an NFL player.’ ”

Benefield sometimes talks like this, quoting himself and others, describing his life as if it were a movie flickering across a giant screen. As if he cannot believe that he has landed the starring role.

He recalls the time after college, when there was some interest from the CFL but he ended up working at his family’s grocery store in Compton.

“It was a very questionable time,” he said. “It was like, ‘Do you want to go [to the CFL]? Everyone was saying that I should. My dad was saying, ‘You don’t want to be sitting around 20 years from now and asking yourself if you could have played.’ ”

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The response to that question could not be found in his demeanor. Benefield is not the classic underdog, not obsessed, not do-or-die.

“I love playing the game but I don’t like a lot of the people who play the game,” he said. “I know you have be nasty to play football but it’s like, ‘You guys are jerks.’

“I mean, I’m from the suburbs. I bodyboard. I skateboard.”

He decided to try the CFL because it might be fun. But the Edmonton Eskimos, the team that owned the rights to Benefield, tucked him away on their practice roster. It took a twist of fate to revive his career.

In the spring of 1992, an Edmonton assistant named Ron Smeltzer took the head coaching job with the Ottawa Rough Riders. Smeltzer suspected that in the Canadian game--played by smaller players on a larger field--Benefield could be molded into a pass rusher.

It was yet another incarnation. Benefield spent most of the following two seasons on the bench, alternately inspired and frustrated, learning the tricks of his new position.

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” said Jeff Reinebold, a rival CFL coach who followed Benefield’s career. “He’d get bounced all over the place. But you had to fall in love with him because he kept coming and coming.”

And there were flashes of brilliance. Two sacks and seven tackles against Saskatchewan. Three forced fumbles against Edmonton.

Benefield finally cracked the starting lineup in 1994 and responded with 38 tackles and nine sacks, making the Eastern Division all-star team.

Several NFL clubs invited him to try out.

“I had started to make a name for myself in the CFL,” he said. “I loved it. Coaches were telling me that this or that guy went down [to the NFL] and never had a chance. It was like, ‘Man, am I going to measure up?’ ”

He signed with the British Columbia Lions instead. Over the course of the 1995 season, Benefield recorded 40 tackles and 12 sacks, including five sacks in a game against Birmingham.

“Finally, my agent said, ‘Do you really want to play in the NFL?’ ” Benefield recalled. “He believed in my playing ability much more than I did.”

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The Lions were reportedly paying Benefield $65,000 a year. The NFL minimum salary is $131,000.

“It’s never been about the money,” he said. “It’s all about happiness. But people were saying, ‘Are you crazy? Take the money.’ ”

San Francisco was the most obvious choice. The 49ers have a so-called “elephant” position, a small linebacker who rushes the passer on third downs.

Last summer, Benefield arrived in camp to try out for the spot.

“I figured, ‘I’ll go and if I have fun and if everything works out, I guess I’ll stay,’ ” he said.

There were rookies who came from major college programs. There were veterans, legends of the game Jerry Rice and Steve Young, who introduced himself in the locker room.

Benefield said: “I was like, ‘I know who you are. I should be introducing myself to you.’ ”

For a time, it seemed overwhelming. There were too many things to learn, too much film to watch, and the odds were too great. Yet in the final exhibition game, against Seattle, the aged rookie got two sacks. He made the team.

It still seems unfathomable.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just started running around, doing the things I can do.”

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One mystery is easily solved: his name.

Back in the seventh grade, he got tired of being a “junior” to his father, David Benefield Sr. That was when he changed the spelling of his first name.

“His dad didn’t mind,” Betty, his mother, said. “In school, Daved was always the one to do silly things.”

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Somewhere in that story, in that spasm of childhood rebellion, there may be a glimmer of a clue as to how Benefield made it to the NFL.

“Listen, he’s got marginal talent,” said Reinebold, who became the Lions’ defensive coordinator the year Benefield left. “He’s not big enough, not strong enough. You can find a million reasons why he shouldn’t be playing in the League.

“But I don’t think Daved sees himself as a football player. Daved’s identity would not cease to be without football. He just plays the game because he loves it. Maybe that was one of the reasons why he cut loose and played so well once he got to the 49ers.”

In other words, maybe Benefield was too busy trying to have fun to be totally intimidated.

Not that his rookie season has been a barrel of laughs. His playing time has been extremely limited and the highlights have come in small increments, mostly on kickoffs--a tackle against St. Louis, another on a Monday night in Green Bay, two more late in the season at Pittsburgh.

As a rookie, he is the low man on the totem pole, which means he hangs out with other rookies. Now that playoff time has rolled around, the intensity has turned up a notch.

“Kenny [Norton Jr.] will come up and give me a look like, ‘Are you really working hard, Dave?’ ” Benefield said. “ ‘Are you really paying attention?’ It’s a tough crowd.”

In the end, it seems Benefield chooses to treat this improbable experience like watching a really good movie, getting swept up in the fantasy, the escapism.

“I just run around and enjoy it like the vacation that it is,” he said. “A vacation from reality.”