WILL CBS FUMBLE THE BALL?

Any event with Roman numerals after its name has to be historic.

So I want to go on the record here as caring deeply about Sunday’s Super Bowl XXI in Pasadena and being terribly disappointed that President Reagan is not planning to be interviewed by CBS at half time.

Maybe CBS could get the Pope. Or Vanna White.

As of this writing, it’s uncertain whether the winner of Sunday’s 3 p.m. game (on Channels 2 and 8) will be CBS or the viewers. As always, though, the viewers are big underdogs.

Here are the keys: The viewers have a shot only if Pat Summerall can hold John Madden to fewer than 46 diagrams per quarter on the CBS telestrator and 29 beer commercials per half.

It’s also critical for viewers that Summerall be held to fewer than 22 pronouncements of “He came to play” or “They have to put some points on the board.”

Even if all this happens, though, it will still be a slaughter if CBS is able to run wild with more than 186 sideline shots of the opposing coaches, 96 shots of players saying, “Hi, mom,” 52 shots of its own executives and entertainment stars watching the game through their designer sunglasses or 27 shots of the Rose Bowl from a blimp.

Prediction: CBS by four touchdowns and three dozen meaningless instant replays.

MR. GARRY RETURNS. All right. You’re reading this, and I know what you’re thinking: He’s writing about this show again ?

Give me a break. I can’t help it. There are only two bad things about “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” on Showtime pay cable TV. One is that “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” is almost impossible to fit into a sentence. See what I mean? The other is that its star spells his Garry with a double “r,” meaning either that he’s an exhibitionist or that he can’t spell.

Otherwise, no complaints. Shandling is the freshest talent and his comedy series the funniest show on TV.

It’s a hip, modernized throwback to the earlier TV of Burns and Allen and other pioneers, dropping the “fourth wall” of the set and venturing behind the scenes and out into the audience to create some of the most inventive comedy ever produced for TV. Everything is reversible and inside out.

Shandling’s role here is to play himself and be self-effacing and unslick while plodding through sitcom life in semi-bewilderment and wearing one of those “Can-this-really be-happening-to-me?” frowns on his face. Plus, he has a few obsessions: his hair, his thick lips, his sexual performance.

With a sweetheart of a show like this, Garry can have a triple “r” if he wants.

He’s now back with a dozen new episodes at 8:30 p.m. Fridays, starting with tonight’s half-hour, a combination “Donahue”/”West Side Story”/”Fiddler on the Roof” and tribute to Lou Gehrig.

In other words, pretty routine.

Nahhhhhh, not true. It’s brilliant, a match even for the last of his first six episodes. In that one, he fell for a girl named Elaine Robertson, whose mother, Mrs. Robertson, had the hots for him. Then Norman Fell showed up. This will really shock Shandling, but that episode bore a striking resemblance to “The Graduate.”

Anyway, tonight’s episode is titled “Garry Met a Girl Named Maria.” It begins with Shandling introducing Maria (Kamala Lopez), a shy stage hand from Guatemala whom he reluctantly agrees to marry to keep from being deported.

He makes that decision only after getting advice from the studio audience and doing a phone-in bit a la Phil Donahue--”’Go ahead, caller”--that’s a scream.

Meanwhile, Maria is so happy to be marrying “Mr. Garry,” as she calls him, that she delivers an echo-chamber version of that famous farewell speech that a dying Gehrig made to a packed Yankee Stadium in 1939: “Todayeeeeee, I consider myself the luckiest womannnnnnn on the face of the earrrrrrrth. . . .”

To reveal more would ruin the fun. Suffice to say that Maria and Mr. Garry are not a match made in heaven. Or even Pismo Beach.

The story is by Janis Hirsch and Ed Solomon, the teleplay by Hirsch and the direction by Alan Rafkin. Barbara Cason returns as Shandling’s mother and Molly Cheek, Scott Nemes, Michael Tucci, Bernadette Birkett and Paul Willson are back in supporting roles.

Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. When I’m watching this show, I consider myself the luckiest viewerrrrrrr on the face of the earrrrrrrth.