He’s at Bottom of Top Division : College football: David Chisum realized his goal of receiving a Division I scholarship. The price will be trying to find a way to help New Mexico State end the nation’s longest major college losing streak.

David Chisum will have no part of 0-21.

That is the heritage of the New Mexico State football team. Chisum says it does not belong to him, to this team or to this coaching staff.

“You have to understand,” he said, almost with boastfulness. “ We’re 0-4.”

He stopped, hearing how ridiculous it could sound to assert that with pride.

“0h-and-four,” he said. “I’ve never even been Oh-and- 2 before.”

No one made Chisum take his spiraling passes from Orange County to Las Cruces, N.M. He did it of his own free will. There is no draft in college football. You accept or you decline.

Yet Chisum not only agreed to a scholarship to play for the Aggies, who hold the longest losing streak in major college football, he also rejoiced at the offer.

“I kind of, so to speak, jumped at the opportunity as soon as it came,” he said.

There was a reason. As Hal Sherbeck his coach the past two seasons at Fullerton College, put it: “Understand, some guys don’t have much of a choice.”

As Chisum put it, assessing his ability: “Realistically speaking, I’m not fast, I’m not big, I don’t have a strong arm.”

A triple no-threat: That will do it every time.

But there were some options.

Washburn University invited Chisum for a visit and offered him a scholarship.

“That’s in Kansas,” he said.

Chisum hadn’t known where it was before, so why would anyone else?

McNeese State expressed interest.

“That one’s in Louisiana,” he said.

Chisum could have walked on at UC Santa Barbara or Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, both Division II programs. He might have made the squad at any Big West Conference school as a walk-on.

But Chisum wanted a scholarship. Wanted, not needed. And he wanted to play at the Division I level.

“Not too many people came knocking on my door,” he said.

In early January, New Mexico State did.

“It’s always been kind of a goal of mine to earn a Division I scholarship,” Chisum said. “Even as a little kid. I really don’t know why. I guess I wanted to play in front of a lot of people, be in a big program. I’m not playing at a powerhouse, but I am playing in the top division.”

Sometimes only nominally so.

Until recently, Kansas State was widely considered the worst program in major college football.

No more. The Aggies played Kansas State in Manhattan on Sept. 15 and lost, 52-7.

“I think we got overconfident, believe it or not,” Chisum said. “God only knows why New Mexico State would ever get overconfident. But we thought, ‘We’re gonna beat these guys.’ We should have been able to beat those guys.”

Chisum has lost four games this season--as many as he lost all last year at Fullerton. Until now, he had been winning all his life.

“David has had things go pretty good for him,” Sherbeck said. “His high school environment, his life style, having things, he’s always been on top.”

Chisum was the full-time starting quarterback for two years at Sunny Hills High School. His team went 11-2 in 1986 and 9-2 in 1987. He was in the same high school class as Bret Johnson and Todd Marinovich. And at times, he bettered them both, ranking first in the Orange County passing efficiency ratings some weeks, ahead of Johnson and Marinovich.

Chisum got calls and letters from all over the country. Some Pacific 10 schools contacted him. Air Force and Texas El Paso asked him to visit their campuses at their expense as two of the five trips the NCAA allows each player. Chisum turned them down.

“I was a pretty naive youngster coming out of high school,” he said. “I was turning down trips and that was really, really dumb. I look back and laugh at what an idiot I was. I thought bigger schools wanted me, because they were calling and giving me tickets to games. I thought I was going to go the Pac-10 or something. It wasn’t cockiness or confidence. I was just naive. Those schools were just covering the bases.”

The careers of the players with whom Chisum once found his name in proximity are well-chronicled. Chisum’s is not.

He sat for a year at Fullerton, then started last season, passing for 2,179 yards and 15 touchdowns.

And now he starts at New Mexico State behind an offensive line that Coach Jim Hess says “isn’t large enough for Division I,” a line that allowed him to be sacked eight times against New Mexico in the first game of the season.

Chisum was bruised and beaten in that game--and, as usual, so were the Aggies, this time by a score of 29-12.

Despite the pressure, Chisum passed for 332 yards, completing 32 of 45 passes with no interceptions and two touchdowns.

“He came back and got them some too,” Hess said. “They won some and he won some.”

Since then, the Aggies have lost three games. They lost to Texas El Paso, 27-24. Then there was the humiliating loss to Kansas State, followed by a 42-3 loss to Fresno State two weeks ago.

Chisum’s statistics are middling. He has completed 59 of 130 passes for 801 yards. He has thrown four touchdown passes, been intercepted eight times and sacked 19 times this season.

“He can’t block for himself,” Hess said. “He can’t get his receivers open. All he can do is get the ball to them.”

Next up is Cal State Long Beach on Saturday at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach.

“We’re not as good as Long Beach either,” Hess said. “They’ve got some outstanding individual athletes.”

Try telling that to Chisum.

“I think we can play and beat any of those teams (in the remaining games), except San Jose State,” Chisum said. “That’s the one team that really has much better ability than us.”

Having been on so many winning teams, Chisum has developed an eye for what separates them from the losing ones.

“I hate to hear people bad-mouth New Mexico State, because there are some good players here,” he said. “This program is not as bad as people think. Last year they were in seven games. They could have won seven times. . . . But it’s human nature: If you win, win, win, it’s easier to win, and if you lose, lose, lose, you expect to lose.

“It’s not getting stressed out when it comes time to make your play or execute. It’s being strong-minded every play and not letting down, always believing you have a chance no matter what the score.”

Hess, who at 53 left the athletic director’s job at Stephen F. Austin to attempt to cultivate a viable football program in the desert, is not convinced the end of the streak is near.

“This is not a good football team,” he said. “There’s no way it’s gonna be. . . . Maybe somewhere down the line we’ll get lucky.”

Still, Chisum never loses sight of the fact that he made this choice.

“I liked the coaching staff and I wanted to be part of the turnaround,” he said.

Could it be that Chisum is happier to lose at the Division I level than he would have been to win at Division II?

“I never said that,” Chisum said. “I never said that.”