Senior outside linebacker Ryan Pedersen loves the game of football.

“Football is the best team game ever created.  If all the guys do their job, you win.  It isn’t just a bunch of individuals out there freelancing,” said the 22-year-old communications major from Beaverton’s Southridge High School.

Football requires “good hands and good feet, but you don’t have to be the best athlete on the field. You just need to know your role and what to do,” said Pedersen, who has started every game since the middle of his sophomore year and has twice earned All-Big Sky honorable mention honors.

All that from a young man who left high school with a big love for the game, but no big college interest in his skills even though he was the defensive team Most Valuable Player and earned second team All-Conference honors as a linebacker and tight end at Southridge.

In high school, he said, “I wasn’t developed physically. I gained 10 to 15 pounds of muscle over that summer before going to college.”

Out of high school, he thought about going to a small school because “I love football and wanted to play the game.  Linfield had told me they were interested, but then I got a walk-on offer at Oregon,” he recalled.

As it turned out, Eugene wasn’t a good fit and he wanted to play a little closer to home.  Following a redshirt year at Oregon, a call to then PSU defensive coordinator Greg Lupfer elicited a request for film and an offer to walk-on for the Vikings.

A disappointing year followed as he hurt a knee and rolled an ankle in fall camp and didn’t even play on special teams as a redshirt freshman. “It was disappointing, but I decided to keep working at it, came out next year and then the coaching change occurred.”

Everyone, including Pedersen, seems to agree that he’s not the most athletic guy on the field, so as a sophomore he was a backup inside linebacker with little or no prospects as a starter. Then, there was an injury at outside linebacker.

“He’s unbelievable.  He has so much heart for the game.  I saw him in practice. And he had great leverage and came to balance well, so I said let’s move him outside. When he’s in the game, his heart makes him run faster than he can run,” said Head Coach Jerry Glanville.

Pedersen remembers the sudden transition to outside linebacker a little ruefully.

“They told me I was starting at outside linebacker (perhaps the most demanding position in Glanville’s 3-4 defense because it is part defensive back, part linebacker and part lineman) and I had a week to prepare.  I didn’t know what to do, but, I follow football, I knew the game and how it works.  So, when I saw a different look, I could see what I should be doing and why.  It was hard at first,” Pederson said.

He credited “Coach E (outside linebacker coach Kevin Emberton)” with a lot of his success because “he’s big on attention to detail.  It makes you want to be perfect.”

That ability to understand and react to differing formations and his perseverance, are what have made the difference for Pedersen.

Pedersen is an intelligent football player, said Emberton.  “He’s a reliable player.  He does his role well. Some other guys might be better athletes but won’t have his intelligence,” said Emberton.

Glanville agrees:  “He’s one of about five seniors I wish wasn’t going to graduate.  If I had him in the pros, he’d be there for 10 years because he’s so smart.”

In terms of perseverance…his experience has dictated advice he’d give to incoming freshmen.

“Don’t ever get discouraged. I went through two years when things were tough. You have to stick with it. You see a player come in with big expectations. When one little thing goes wrong—they don’t start or things are as they expected—they get down.  Why is this happening?  Why aren’t I starting?... that sort of thing.  When you do get there, it’s very gratifying,” he said.

And after the unsettled year at Oregon and a disappointing first year at PSU, Ryan Pedersen knows a thing or two about sticking with it.

Asked about playing highlights as a Viking, Pedersen said that just being able to start every game is a highlight. But, probably his greatest moment was “when Jerry gave me my scholarship.  I’d worked so hard and overcome so many obstacles to get there, it was like a reward for how hard I was working.  I’ll never forget getting that scholarship and starting my first game,” he said.

Credited with being a tough defender, Pedersen said he’s a different person off the field.

“I like the physicality of the game. On the field, you can be intense and hit people. Off the field, you can be a different person. I’m really relaxed and laid back.  I don’t like to get into arguments,” he said.

Life can be intense between football and studying (he’s carrying a 3.4 gpa in communications and will graduate this year), so he likes to unwind in his spare time by playing video games with his friends and listening to music (a wide range but especially reggae and hip hop-- “most of the time I like uplifting music”).

With his football career winding down and a college degree looming on the horizon, he hasn’t thought much about what he’d like to do.  He’s thought about teaching high school and coaching but is undecided.

“I’ve been concentrating on football and my studies.  I guess I’m going to have took at the future pretty soon,” he said.

Already, though, his coaches think he’s equipped with some of the tools to be successful.  He’s smart and he doesn’t give up.