In a Crowded Backfield, He’s Just a Name : Chargers: Peter Tuipulotu is earning raves from coaching staff, but those reviews won’t necessarily get him a roster spot.

Lets’ face the facts: You can’t pronounce his name, and why bother?

Peter Tuipulotu has no shot to make the Chargers.

The Chargers need another 5-11, 210-pound running back like the Dream Team needs one more scorer. Come on, who is this guy’s agent? The Chargers have Marion Butts, Ronnie Harmon, Rod Bernstine and Eric Bieniemy, and Tuipulotu has a death wish.

“If I make it, I make it,” he said. “If I don’t, I don’t.”

So the guy from BYU talks like a football player. That’s not going to do it. Just what was he thinking when he decided to pass on 27 other NFL teams and sign with the running back-rich Chargers?

“I have nothing to lose,” he said. “I’m just going to play hard and do the best I can.”

Why not write 100 letters to the worst rushing team in the league and beg for a tryout? The Chargers need cornerbacks and quarterbacks. They already have one running back too many with Bieniemy, who, after finishing his senior season at Colorado as the nation’s No. 2 rusher, carried the ball a total of three times last season for the Chargers.

Tuipulotu is slow, he’s a free agent and he missed the team’s initial mini-camp. The Arena Football League is filled with guys packing such credentials.

“When we started training camp,” said Billy Devaney, the Chargers’ director of player personnel, “you’d have to say: ‘He’s here to hold down the fort until the other guys get here.’ In all honesty, that’s all you would expect.”

Today the other guys show up. Tuipulotu, thanks for the memories.

“I know what you’re getting at,” Tuipulotu said. “I knew all these great running backs were here and I understand what you’re saying, but I guess it never dawned on me. It was just a dream of mine since I was a kid to try out for an NFL team, and now every day when I wake up it’s like I’m still dreaming: ‘I’m still here.’ ”

That’s no dream; that’s a certifiable miracle.

“What a great situation,” he said. “I’m here and I’m a nobody, and if I catch their eye that will be great. And if I don’t, I’m still a nobody.”

There is his redeeming quality. If there is somebody out there who is a real nobody, Bobby Beathard wants to sign him. Beathard is one of the best in the business of making nobodies into somebodies.

“Bobby really liked the guy; he gave Peter a lot more credit than the other scouts gave him,” Devaney said. “We should have drafted him. We knew he could catch the ball, and he’s done that from day one. But he’s a better runner than we gave him credit for.

“Now at the end of each day the coaches are talking about Peter doing something good. Usually there are peaks and valleys, but he’s been on an even keel the whole way through. He’s super smart, has great toughness, and he’s like this year’s version of Chris Samuels.”

Lazerus lives. Last year Samuels was the running back who had the Last Rites read to him at the opening of training camp. But after spending the early part of the season on the developmental squad, he returned and helped lead the Chargers to an upset victory over New Orleans.

Samuels, however, broke his leg and he remains on crutches. So if the Chargers carry five running backs into this season . . .

“Then (Tuipulotu) has a great shot of making it,” Devaney said. “He’s such a good kid that it’s easy to root for a guy like this. But with somebody like Peter, it always comes down to numbers. If we carry five receivers and four running backs then realistically he has no shot. Based on what he’s done so far, though, he’s looking good.”

So how do you pronounce that last name?

“Peter T. did a hell of a job (in the scrimmage with the Rams),” said Coach Bobby Ross. “He’s just a guy we signed as a free agent and he’s come in here and done a hell of a job. He’s a good, solid, hard-nosed football player. He’s not the fastest guy in the world, but he sticks it up in there and he’s given us a really good performance the whole time he’s been here.”

“Too-ee,” as coaches and teammates have come to call him, averaged five yards a carry on four rushes against the Rams and caught three passes for 33 yards. While at BYU, he also averaged five yards a carry and figured prominently in the Cougars’ passing attack with 41 receptions.

“On our initial evaluation we had him pegged as being a guy who gets just the yardage you would expect,” Devaney said. “But against the Rams he caught a seven-yard pass and turned it into a 15-yard gain. That’s what he has been doing ever since he got here.

“He does all the little things the coaches love. He does a lot of valuable things. Each day he keeps showing us some thing.”

One week ago, who would have thought he would be anything but training camp fodder?

“Here I am just a regular do-what-I-can guy, and Butts, Bernstine, Harmon and Bieniemy are guys who are really great in some of the things they can do,” Tuipulotu said. “I just run and it’s dull and that’s all I can do.”

And he’ll never become a household name.