Smith Shares the History, but Lott Owns the Rings : Players: Defensive backs have been competing for more than a decade, even when they were roommates at USC.

Title this one, “Enemies, a Love Story.”

Ronnie Lott and Dennis Smith. Ronnie Lott vs. Dennis Smith. The best of friends, the best of old Trojans, brought together again under the best and worst of circumstances.

Lott and Smith are here to win the Super Bowl. Only one of them can. As a San Francisco 49er, Lott has been to three Super Bowls. As a Denver Bronco, Smith has been to two.

If you know your history, you know who’s lord of the rings in this relationship.

“I have to be humble,” Smith says. “He’s got three Super Bowl rings. He doesn’t have to rub it in. All he has to do is put his hands on the table.”

Share the wealth. “He’s won three ,” Smith says, marveling at the extravagance. “Give us one.”

This afternoon would be nice.

Lott and Smith are used to sharing things. They shared a dormitory room at USC. They shared a car on dates.

But here, Lott says, the sharing has to stop.

“I’m sure he’d love to get one,” Lott acknowledges. “We’re going to try to make it very difficult for him.”

So the competition continues. Lott and Smith have been going at it since long before the Super Bowls. They met as opponents in a high school all-star game. The next time they got together, they were USC freshmen, vying for spots in the same defensive backfield.

“Each time we walked on the football field, we were always competing against each other,” Lott says.

“We always brought out the best in each other,” Smith says.

By the time they were seniors, that was enough to make each of them All-American safeties and, later, first-round NFL draft choices. Theirs was a friendship born out of one-upmanship. “There’s a picture of Ronnie and me going for an interception in the Rose Bowl,” Smith says. “Me up in air and him on my back. That’s how it always was.”

If not interceptions, it was tackles. They went after the same ballcarriers, laid them out and kept score. It was a tooth for a tooth, bonus points awarded for the number they were able to loosen.

Both cite the 1980 game against South Carolina and eventual Heisman Trophy winner George Rogers as the setting for their greatest hits.

“Rogers was getting 100 yards against everybody that year,” Lott recalls. “We weren’t going to let him do it to us.

“The first hit Dennis made on Rogers, he must have knocked him back 10 yards. A great hit. After that, it was, ‘Take your best shot.’ I think Rogers remembered us that year.”

Smith smiles and nods at the recollection.

“Ronnie was more excited than me after I made that hit,” he says. “He damn near tackled me after the play. He was determined not to let George Rogers run over us. I remember after I hit him, Ronnie was yelling and running full speed at me.

“He put a hit on me.”

There were some not-so-great moments, too, like the time they were playing Stanford and Lott failed to heed his roommate’s advice about a guy named Elway.

“We were on the 50-yard line and Elway goes back, and he’s running around back there for 10 seconds,” Lott remembers. “Everybody on our defensive line is chasing him. He’s back at his own 40.

“I’m standing at about the 10-yard line, (Stanford’s) Ken Margerum is in the back of the end zone and I’m thinking, ‘No way is he gonna throw the ball to him.’ But Dennis is yelling at me, ‘You got to get back.’

“I say, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get there.’

“Well, the ball was thrown and I didn’t get there.”

Lott learned a little about trusting your best friend and a lot about Elway on that play.

“Last week, when Jim Everett threw that ball to Flipper Anderson and I looked up at it, I said, ‘Maybe I can get to that,’ ” Lott says. “But when I saw this ball, it was like a rocket. The ball hit Margerum and knocked him back five yards. I couldn’t even get a hit on him.”

Lott has since filed it away to deal with Elway today.

All week, as they prepared for this reunion, Lott and Smith have spent much of their time talking about the other. They seem to enjoy it. Their bond is legitimate, not something trumped up for the benefit of those tired of asking Joe Montana why he’s so great.

“I grew up a military kid and we moved around a lot,” Lott says. “My relationship with Dennis was really the first relationship I ever had. I look at it and say, ‘God, I developed it. I kept it going.’

“Somebody told me you’re only going to have two real friends in your lifetime. Dennis is one of them.”

Says Smith: “We’re kind of like Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas. But I told Ronnie, ‘I’m not going to kiss you before the game.’ ”

They laugh easily about their clumsy freshman days at USC, hanging out with defensive back Eric Scoggins--”Three blind mice,” Lott calls them--and fumbling as they tried to impress the ladies.

“One night we got dressed up and said, ‘Let’s enjoy L.A.,’ ” Lott says. “So we went out and saw all these gorgeous girls, and we’d ask them to dance. They looked at us like we were crazy. They turned us down left and right.

“We kinda put that aside for a while. But it’s funny. Once our careers developed, we’d go back to the same place and start getting some dances. Amazing.

“At the time, though, we were some lonely guys.”

You got to be a football hero. Today, both qualify, albeit on different levels. Smith has been a solid pro with Denver, a stabilizing presence in three Super Bowl secondaries. He gets elected to Pro Bowls.

Lott is headed for the Hall of Fame.

“He’s the Michael Jordan of defensive backs,” Smith allows. “I’m not in his league. I’m the poor man’s Ronnie Lott.”

Lott doesn’t laugh at that one. He’s uneasy with the comparison, bristling at the suggestion that his NFL career has outstripped Smith’s.

“I think Dennis and I have been on the same parallel,” Lott says. “He’s had some players overshadow him at Denver and he’s had some injuries. I think he’s one of the best hitters in the league.

“One of the hardest hits I’ve ever seen was the one he put on (49er fullback) Tom Rathman this year (in an exhibition game). That and the one he put on (Larry) Kinnebrew a couple years ago. Those hits haven’t been shown that much, but they make my highlight film.”

Smith appreciates the good words. Now, Ronnie, can you do something about this ring thing?

“We haven’t made any bets,” Smith says. “But maybe he’ll come up to my room for champagne after we win.”

It’s the least Lott can do. Well, maybe not quite the least. There’s always giving Vance Johnson just a tad more room in the end zone in the fourth quarter.

Smith isn’t asking for much. Just a little respect and a little piece of jewelry.

Call it a friendship ring.