THE BIG GAME : Kearny, UC Fight for Title : Football: Players also competing for individual honors.

Today’s 2:30 p.m. City Western League finale between Kearny and University City has all the potential for a classic, bitter showdown.

At stake are a league championship and a playoff seeding for two teams that are 16-0 the past eight weeks.

No. 7 UC (9-0, 3-0) and No. 8 Kearny (8-1, 3-0) are battling not only for rankings. A victory today might also be a springboard to all-league status for some players.

Considering the importance of this game, one would think that players from both sides--who have struck up many friendships off the field--would scrap the normal pregame joking and jousting. Not so.

When UC popped in the Kearny video tape Monday, it got scenes of the Three Stooges. Moe clobbered Larry with a trombone. Curly got knocked out in a boxing ring.

To rub salt in an old wound of UC defensive coordinator Chris Miller, Komet assistant Tom Barnett added clips of his team’s 1983 blowout of No. 1 Crawford. Barnett, then the Komet head coach, beat Miller’s Colts, 36-0.

“I think they did that because they’re kind of scared,” said Centurion linebacker Ken Williams, who leads a defense that has allowed a county-low 25 points this season. He laughed at the tape. “Not to be cocky, but they got to do something . . .”

Kearny Coach Willie Matson said the film prank was a payback--Miller had duped them with a bogus video earlier in the season. Kearny had asked Mira Mesa for the tape of the Marauders’ game this season against UC.

“Mira Mesa is on the field, and all of a sudden Chad Davis (the former quarterback now at Oklahoma) is on the field,” Matson said. “It’s all Chad Davis.

“We called Mira Mesa and asked what the hell is going on. They said, ‘All we know is we got the film back from UC.’ We knew it was Chris Miller.”

All pranks aside, the players aren’t taking this game so humorously.

“This is the biggest game of my entire career,” said Komet running back James Curtis, who has rushed for more than 4,600 yards and scored 55 touchdowns in three years. “I think UC should worry about us .”

As a warm-up for this game, both teams scored 55 points in victories last week. UC’s offense, which centers around option quarterback Daranzol Sheppard and backs El Miller and Paul Turner, has scored a county-best 307 points.

Kearny, with a defense that allows only 10.7 points per game, has played a slightly tougher schedule. Its only loss--24-7 to El Capitan (8-1)--came the first week of the season. Since, then the Komets have developed offensive weapons other than Curtis.

Williams, perhaps a little too small (5-feet-11, 206 pounds) and too slow (4.9 in the 40) to play Division I college ball, has dominated most UC games. Now he sets his sights on Curtis.

“He’s a really good runner,” Williams said, “but I’ve seen teams scared to tackle him--which I don’t understand. He’s not a punishing runner. We have the speed to contain him.”

“He’s a good linebacker,” said Curtis, who has yet to meet Williams although he and some Kearny teammates have attended a few UC postgame parties this year. “I heard he talks too much.”