The Game Is Worth Even More : College football: At 29, Stan Vetock has left behind a six-figure income to deliver pizzas and play for Auburn.

Had Stan Vetock given up the six-figure income, the beautiful house, the sports cars, expensive clothes and dinners at fine restaurants to become a star football player at Auburn University, his story might be a little easier to fathom.

But to sell practically everything you own, move from an affluent Washington, D.C., suburb to a small football-crazed Alabama town to walk on to the Tigers’ team?

To play in only one game in two seasons, and to not even suit up for most games?

To be an undersized defensive lineman whose only contact with the first team is during practice?

To work at two minimum-wage jobs, delivering pizza and mowing lawns, just so you can eat and pay the rent and tuition?

All of that is what makes the Stan Vetock story a story.

“A lot of people think I’m crazy because this is a hell of a lot of work--getting beat up, hurting, sweating, aching in bed,” Vetock said. “Some of my teammates said they’d rather sit in the Jacuzzi with a cordless phone, talking to women. I told them they’d understand when they’re 29.”

Most won’t, unless their lives somehow take the dramatic turns that Vetock’s has in the past three years.

Not many people are financially secure in their mid-20s, experience mid-life crises at 26, attempt to reclaim their lost youth by turning back the hands of time and cruise into their 30s going to fraternity parties and dating 19-year-old women.

This was a quantum leap, to say the least.

In 1989, Vetock was on his way to making about $130,000 as a real estate agent in Sterling Park, Va. He had never gone to college but was a smashing success in the business.

His three-level, five-bedroom home had a Jacuzzi and a tanning bed. Vetock went through cars as if they were ties, buying new ones every year or so and getting rid of the old ones when they went out of style. A Corvette, Honda Accord and Chrysler Newport were parked in his garage.

Vetock thought nothing of spending $180 for a pair of shoes or $130 for an Egyptian cotton shirt. He ran up $500 monthly car-phone bills. He was a regular at Chez Francois, a fashionable restaurant in Great Falls, Va., where he would run into the likes of Ted Koppel and Ted Kennedy.

“It was fun,” Vetock said. “Then again, the first three letters in the word funeral are fun, and I might not be alive if I stayed there. I got into a crazy lifestyle, living in the fast lane. Who knows who you meet when you start flashing big money around? You know how values can change when you get caught up in the almighty buck.”

Other distressing thoughts filled Vetock’s mind. He still felt bad about his 1987 divorce and missed his son, Adam, who is now 6 and living with his mother in Pennsylvania.

Vetock said he was sitting on a beach in Florida’s panhandle, trying to recharge his batteries during a long vacation in October, 1989, when something flashed through his head.

“Seven or eight years had passed since high school, and I didn’t know where all the years had gone,” he said. “I wasn’t getting any younger, so I said, ‘Man, this is it--I’ve got to do what I need to do.’

“I wanted to fulfill some dreams, get away from the rat race and chasing money. I came to the realization that money isn’t what it’s cracked up to be; that filling lifelong goals is a much better indicator of success than making a couple thousand bucks a week.”

So Vetock decided to go to college. Because he had enjoyed vacationing in Florida, he figured he’d enroll at the University of Florida. He began the journey home to Virginia, traveling north through Alabama, daydreaming about his new life ahead.

Then he noticed a sign for Auburn University and a billboard featuring legendary running back-outfielder Bo Jackson, who had won the Heisman Trophy there and gone on to play professional football and baseball.

“I thought, ‘Damn, so this is where he went to school,’ ” Vetock said.

Vetock cruised through town. The streets were crowded, there were police blockades everywhere and officers were rerouting cars around town.

“It seemed like an exciting place, considering it was in the middle of nowhere,” Vetock said.

That’s because it was a football Saturday. Louisiana State was in town for a Southeastern Conference game. Vetock bought a ticket to the game, followed the road to Jordan Hare Stadium and was immediately enthralled by the scene--tailgaters crowding the parking lots and 85,000 fans filling the stadium.

“I don’t know if it was divine intervention or what, but everything in my mind disappeared,” Vetock said. “Everyone was going crazy at the game. The campus was beautiful. I decided right then to go there. I went back to Virginia, packed my bags and, boom , I was at Auburn shortly thereafter.”

Vetock sold his house and cars and watched the lucrative real estate career and lavish lifestyle fade in the rear-view mirror of his rental truck.

“He could have made a fortune working for me,” said Jim Stakem, broker-owner of the company for which Vetock worked. “In fact, he made a lot of money working for me. He just chose not to come back. Sometimes I’d like to do the same.

“We all thought Stan was a little crazy, but at the same time we understood. It’s a real tough business, and Stan had other priorities.”

Tops on the list was playing college football. Even though Vetock had never played high school football--the last time he had played was in the seventh grade--he had always dreamed of playing in college.

Fortunately for Vetock, he was still in good shape, and few teammates realized how old he was until newspaper articles about him began appearing last summer.

In January of 1990, just before he turned 27, the 6-foot-1, 240-pound Vetock walked into Auburn defensive coordinator Wayne Hall’s office and asked to go out for the team. “The biggest thing I worried about was having enough liability insurance to put him on the field,” Hall said.

No wonder. On his first play of a spring-practice scrimmage, 6-4, 316-pound offensive guard Eddie Blake, an NFL draft pick last June, drove Vetock about 30 yards downfield.

The coaches chuckled. But Vetock grinned. And he couldn’t get that silly grin off his face.

“When I got hit for the first time, I thought, ‘Damn, this is all right,’ ” he said. “I don’t know what was wrong with me, but I didn’t mind being hit. You feel like a gladiator when you hit or are hit. That first time I got hit might have been more intense than the first time I played in a game.”

Vetock had to wait almost two years for that feeling, but after spending 1991 on the sidelines, he finally got his chance in a 55-0 rout of Samford in September. He played about three series of downs and got in on a tackle or two.

“It was like I had hit Lotto--I was in disbelief,” Vetock said. “When the coaches told me to go in, it took me about two seconds to get out on the field. It was like a culmination of everything finally coming together. It was real intense, being in front of 70,000 people.”

Vetock’s goal is to play in three or four games and says his next chance will be Oct. 24, when Auburn plays Southwestern Louisiana.

In the meantime, he’s content to live the life of a starving student-athlete. He is majoring in sports nutrition and diet therapy and is on course to graduate next spring. He might pursue a master’s degree, though, and says he would eventually like to work as a nutritionist for a professional team.

He drives a 1963 Ford convertible, parts of which are held together by duct tape and masking tape. He makes $4.25 an hour delivering pizza three or four nights a week, sometimes until 2 a.m., and $5 an hour cutting grass three days a week. He lives in an athletic dormitory with one roommate, and on those rare occasions when he goes out to eat, he won’t spend more than $5 or $6.

And he’s more famous now than he was when he was making all that money in Virginia.

He has been featured in the Washington Post and the Huntsville, Ala., Times, and “Good Morning America” and “The Today Show” have asked him about making an appearance. A Los Angeles production company has inquired about a television movie.

It’s a far cry from the fancy houses, cars, clothes and restaurants, but it has hardly been a reversal of fortune.

“I don’t miss that life one single bit,” Vetock said. “You know, just today I was coming down the road with a bed, frame and box of clothes in the car, and I was thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is pretty awesome.’

“I felt sorry for people who base their lives on material things. I thought about when I’ll be 90 years old and what my memories will be. I’ll have happy memories instead of memories of big luxury tubs and car phones.”