All-Around Good Guy

Already an All-American sprinter and part-time starter on Oregon’s basketball team, Jordan Kent felt the lure of a third calling far from the heat of competition.

He was in the school’s athletic department offices last July when he had a chance encounter with wide receiver coach Dan Ferrigno, a man he recognized only as one of the Ducks’ assistant football coaches.

After a few moments of small talk, Ferrigno turned toward the 6-foot-5, 210-pound Kent and half-jokingly asked, “So, when are you coming out for fall camp?”

That was all the urging Kent needed.

“Funny you mention that,” he responded.

Funny indeed.

Only a couple of months later, the athlete who had never played the sport outside of a few flag football games in middle-school physical education class was hauling in a catch for a 68-yard scoring play against Washington State to help keep alive Oregon’s bid for a bowl championship series game.

“It’s just crazy how fate works out,” Kent said.

Kent’s success seems less startling when you realize the set of skills that has enabled the junior to become the first three-sport letterman at Oregon since at least the 1940s, when such records began being kept, and the first among schools now in the Pacific 10 Conference since Arizona State’s J.D. Hill lettered in track (1969), football (1967, ‘68, ‘70) and baseball (1968).

Kent combines a sprinter’s speed with a linebacker’s tenacity and a coach’s acumen. All will be on display Wednesday night at Staples Center when Kent’s Ducks play Washington State in the first round of the Pac-10 men’s basketball tournament.

“It is kind of cool to say you’re one of the few -- if not the only -- three-sport athlete[s] in Division I,” Kent said recently during a rare moment of relaxation at the downtown L.A. hotel where his team is staying. “I figure if you have the chance to play all three, you might as well.”

For most of his athletic career, Kent competed in two sports and played them exceedingly well. At Eugene (Ore.) Churchill High, he was an 11-time state champion, encompassing one basketball title and a multitude of team and individual track titles.

When he was picking a college, Stanford made an attractive track scholarship offer, but Oregon, coming off an Elite Eight appearance in basketball, featured a top sports marketing program. And then there was the Duck coach.

“I always wanted to play basketball for my dad,” Kent said.

Ernie Kent, himself a former basketball standout at Oregon, soon had the privilege of utilizing his son as the team’s designated stopper, a high-energy player who would fight for steals and rebounds. Although he showed potential for scoring outbursts last season with a 19-point effort against Washington, Jordan Kent contributed mostly hustle.

“I might have some of the worst offensive stats in college basketball, but it doesn’t bother me one bit,” said Kent, who this season averages 3.0 points and 4.3 rebounds. “If you need me to rebound, I’ll rebound. If you need me to just play defense the entire time, I will. It really doesn’t matter if I score.”

Kent has scored big on the track. As a sophomore he was an All-American on Oregon’s 1,600-meter relay team that finished third at the NCAA championships, and he anchored the 400 relay team that set a school record.

Despite his athletic success, Kent would sit next to his dad during Oregon football games at Autzen Stadium and somehow feel unfulfilled, as if he could be doing more.

“He kind of sat up in the stadium during different games and said, ‘You know, Dad, I can do that. I can be a football player. I’ve always wanted to play.’ ” Ernie Kent recalled. “And you don’t think much of it.”

Jordan Kent had always figured that even with his combination of size and speed, he was simply too fragile to absorb bone-crushing hits.

“I’ve always had people tell me, ‘You’re tall, you’re fast, I can’t believe you never played football. There aren’t that many guys 6-5 who can run as fast as you,’ ” Kent said. “I was like, I don’t know, I was just always too skinny.”

Oregon’s football coaches had continually kidded him about playing on the team since he arrived on campus. So Ferrigno, the wide receiver coach, seemed like the clever one when he persuaded Kent to come talk about it in his office.

“Finally,” Ferrigno said, “he took me up on it.”

Kent left Ferrigno’s office with a media guide and arranged to play catch with Duck quarterback Kellen Clemens for a few days.

After a leisurely first day of soft toss, Kent procured a helmet from his former high school athletic director that was missing its chin strap and was wearing neither gloves nor cleats when he showed up to meet Clemens for a more rigorous workout.

“Trying to catch those bullet passes with no gloves, I was getting red marks all over my arms because I didn’t know how to catch with my hands yet,” Kent said. “It was humbling.”

And yet that experience wasn’t as mortifying as the moment Kent sought permission from his dad to go forward with the experiment.

“I thought he was joking at first,” Ernie Kent said. “I remember when he called me he said, ‘Dad, would you still love me if I did something you didn’t approve of?’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He says, ‘I want to play football.’ My first reaction was, ‘Football?’

“From a coaching perspective, you were worried about what it would do to your [basketball] team, because I know what he means to us in terms of his energy and passion for the game and just how unselfish he is. And yet from a parenting perspective, you’ve got to love your kids and let them go to watch them grow.”

The football coaches agreed to give Kent a four-day tryout at the beginning of fall camp to determine whether, as Kent put it, “This was going to be worth my time.”

The answer came quickly.

“He made a lot of progress in a very short time,” said Ferrigno, who now coaches wide receivers at California. “Some of the things that you do in basketball, the movements you have, carry over well to football at the receiver position, so I think that’s an advantage for him.”

So was his speed. On his long catch against Washington State on Nov. 12, Kent outran the defensive back on a deep post route and scored to help the Ducks pull out a 34-31 victory.

“It was probably the best moment in any sport I’ve had just because how crazy it may have seemed like three months ago when you look back to when I’m running around with this goofy helmet on,” Kent said.

“It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

Kent appeared in eight games and had three catches for 114 yards while showing pro potential, according to Ferrigno.

He was excused from a portion of the Ducks’ Holiday Bowl preparations so he could return to the basketball team.

He played in four games before rejoining the football team and then was back on the hardwood two days after Oregon’s bowl loss to Oklahoma.

Ernie Kent said he had been worried that his son’s juggling act might hinder his schoolwork and sap his energy, but Jordan has seemed invigorated.

He remains on track to graduate this spring with a degree in sports marketing and will begin graduate-school classes in the fall.

“It would be a lot harder if I had people telling me I couldn’t do it or thinking that I should stick to one thing,” Kent said. “The fact that they all support it and embrace it, that’s what makes it so much easier and so much more enjoyable.”

Kent, whose favorite sport is “whichever one I’m playing,” is nearing a crossroads.

Intrigued by the NFL and the lure of being an Olympic sprinter, he realizes that a time will come when he has to dedicate himself to one sport. He’s just glad that time is not now.

“I look at it as, I have this opportunity to do all of them right now in a really organized structure, so I might as well,” he said. “It’s not like I’m going to be old when I graduate. I’m going to be 22 and I’ve got all the time in the world.

“Whatever sport I get a chance to do from there, then obviously I’ll want to stick with it. But for right now I just love doing all three of them.”