BIG BUCKS IN BOOSTERISM : Marketing college souvenirs has become a billion-dollar business.

University of Southern California fans can buy a Trojan mailbox to display outside their homes. On the golf course, they can drive Titleist balls in cardinal and gold.

Across town at the University of California, Los Angeles, there are 85 styles of UCLA sweat shirts and 100 different T-shirts on sale at the student store alone. Another 100 to 200 different shirts and sweat shirts are on sale at stores off campus. Someone even sought permission once to sell an official Bruin dog food but was turned down.

These are some of the thousands of products and would-be products pitched and marketed each year in the billion-dollar business of selling official college souvenirs, clothing and accessories. Buoyed by the explosion in televised sports in the 1970s and 1980s, colleges have found that their names and mascots are known from Champaign, Ill., to Tokyo and worth millions in sales of shirts, sweat shirts, baby bottles, toothbrush holders, key chains and fishing tackle.

“We take people from the cradle to the grave,” said Anne H. Chasser, licensing program director at Ohio State University and president of the Assn. of Collegiate Licensing Administrators.

Colleges nearly do. They license baby bottles and baby shoes. And at the University of Iowa, someone recently pitched the idea of selling an official Hawkeye tombstone.

More unusual was the official Nittany Lion plunger turned down by Penn State University. It would have featured the college’s name written on a wooden handle and the name of its archrival, the University of Pittsburgh, on the rubber suction cup.

But those are the quirky products. Most of the sales are in clothing, and the market is huge. Licensing professionals estimate that nearly $3 billion a year in professional and college licensed products are sold. Of that, university officials who license products believe that about $1 billion of it is spent on college-related merchandise.

Fall is to the sellers of the college merchandise what Christmas is to department stores. Football season, combined with the return of students to campus from summer vacation, accounts for as much as 60% to 70% of the sales for some schools.

“It’s football that drives this whole thing,” said Dickie Van Meter, administrator at the University of Iowa.

For colleges, money from licensed products has been an unexpected windfall that experts estimate could total $50 million to $75 million in royalties this year for schools. Manufacturers typically pay schools 6.5% to 8% of the wholesale price of the goods sold, with most universities getting 7.5%. Licensing revenues, virtually nil 10 years ago, are growing at double-digit rates for most schools.

At UCLA, one of the nation’s early leaders in licensing products, royalties bring about $750,000, including money from some $6 million in products sold wholesale each year to retailers in Japan. USC takes in about $300,000 a year in royalties.

The leaders in royalty income are believed to be national football champion Notre Dame and National Collegiate Athletic Assn. basketball champion Michigan. Both receive about $1 million a year in royalties. Michigan, which won both the Rose Bowl and basketball championship this year, may bring in as much as $1.5 million in royalties this year, said Michigan Assistant Athletic Director Will Perry.

Foreign markets are proving lucrative as well. Canada is becoming a major market for U.S. collegiate products, because Canadians are avid watchers of American televised sports.

This month, UCLA’s international licensing administrator, Jack Revoyr, was in Tokyo and Osaka working on marketing programs in Japan, where UCLA-related materials are popular.

“It’s part of the appeal and charm of Los Angeles,” Revoyr said.

The licensing money goes to scholarships, building programs, athletic department budgets or general funds, which administrators say has helped diffuse early criticism that licensing programs might exploit the names of schools. The money is much needed, schools say, in the wake of budget tightening and such factors as the federal Title IX act, which requires that women athletes be offered the same athletic opportunities that historically are afforded men.

At many of the largest schools, more than 500 separate companies have permission to make and sell products using school names and mascots. In addition, the NCAA has its own program for such events as the Final Four basketball tournament.

The largest schools have full-time licensing administrators with staffs that seek new markets, police the use of their symbols and names and retain lawyers to litigate when they detect pirating by unauthorized sellers. More than 100 schools use two related licensing services, Inter Collegiate Enterprises in Atlanta and its sister company, Collegiate Concepts Inc. in Santa Barbara.

In addition, the NCAA has an active licensing program that sells thousands of dollars during such events as the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament.

Surprisingly, most colleges stumbled into the business.

Souvenirs have been sold for years, and schools received nothing. Most did not even apply for trademarks for their names, mascots and insignia until as the late 1970s or early 1980. When they did, it was usually for protection and prompted by the sale of cheap or tasteless products.

Michigan, for example, discovered the potential of university-related products in the 1970s when it used to offer coffee mugs to fans in mass mailings to sell tickets to athletic events. But the university, Perry said, first began taking a major interest in licensing and enforcing its rights to its name when it discovered a man selling posters with portraits of past coaches that had been printed in Michigan football programs.

Court decisions have since upheld the right of schools to control the use of their names, insignias and mascots, although they still often must actively enforce them.

UCLA went to court in Columbus, Ohio, two years ago to stop a chain of clothing stores from infringing on its trademarks by selling unauthorized UCLA materials. Elizabeth Kennedy, trademark licensing manager at USC, said the university frequently has problems with unauthorized merchandise sold at flea markets or by people who set up stands near the Coliseum on the days of football games.

Getting authorization to sell a product is not difficult, licensing administrators say, as long as it is well made and in good taste. Unlike professional sports programs, which carefully limit the number of licenses products, universities often feel a public relations obligation to people in nearby communities and to alumni who want to sell products.

Revoyr, UCLA’s licensing chief, said the school has a four-person committee that reviews products submitted to the school. He said four out of 10 products are turned down, usually because they are of inferior quality.

Colleges also are wary of food, beverages or personal-care products both for image reasons and because they might face liability problems if someone were hurt using a product. As a result, nearly all have turned down beer named after their schools. Colleges also require vendors to take out insurance coverage protecting the university and to sign contracts that relieve schools of liability.

Licensing executives contend that, despite the number of products available, they do not fear saturation. Retailers, they argue, like college merchandise in part because they have been stuck with unsuccessful licensed products from fads or from movies that bombed. With college products, they note, demand is steady each year as students graduate and new ones enter schools.