Tailgaters’ Revelry Kicks Off Rivalry : Sports: Champagne toasts, barbecues and even a mariachi band are part of the festivities before UCLA-USC game.

The close game, it turned out, was not nearly as exciting for Eli Sandoval as the Close Call.

Hours before Saturday’s kickoff at the Coliseum, it was time to get ready for that great UCLA-USC tradition: The tailgate party. And Sandoval was checking off his list.

The three motor homes. The mariachi band. The makings for the pregame Mexican-style buffet breakfast and postgame steak barbecue dinner. The game tickets for him and his 86 guests. Check, check, check . . . oops .

Eighty-seven prized tickets to one Very Important local football game were missing--lost in a registered mail package somewhere between Alhambra (where Sandoval lived six months ago when he ordered them) and Chino Hills (where he recently moved).

Sandoval’s was one of thousands of parties staged Saturday outside the stadium. Some were more elaborate. But none was more dramatic.

The range of revelry went from the crystal glasses of Champagne being hoisted for UCLA by Tim Neuland, Jerry and Linda Criner and Liana Boltan, all of Orange County, to the heartier fare being quaffed on the other side of the arena. That is where water deliveryman Jeff Griffith of Hermosa Beach was pumping rum punch out of one of his company’s five-gallon jugs so his friends could salute USC.

It was that way everywhere you looked as the faithful got ready for one of the biggest Big Games in recent memory, which UCLA won, 27-21. The smell of charcoal-grilled burgers, chicken and chops was in the air. So was the scent of roses.

“Rose Bowl! Rose Bowl!” shouted Steve Blinn of Malibu, leaping from his picnic blanket as the UCLA band marched through Exposition Park on its way to the stadium. Blinn’s son, also named Steve, is a tight end on the UCLA football team.

“ We’re going to the Rose Bowl!” yelled Ann Turner of Westchester as she walked across the nearby USC campus and handed out rose blossoms to a group of Trojan accounting students gathered next to a “Tailgate Party” banner.

There wasn’t a tailgate in sight of that beer-swilling brigade, however. USC student Alex Vorobieff, 22, was quick to explain why: “UCLA students eat off tailgates because they end up living in the back of their car after they graduate. USC students don’t. We live in houses.”

It turned out that there were few tailgates visible anywhere around the Coliseum.

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Identical twins Joy Rasic and Joan Ratigan made do with the trunk of a black 1991 Cadillac. The 59-year-olds (from San Marino and Long Beach, respectively) wore matching red outfits accented by gold USC jewelry. They were sipping drinks (a screwdriver and a Scotch and water, respectively) as they readied roast chicken, sausage, Caesar salad and dinner rolls for a crowd of 25.

“We’re a family,” said Joy.

“USC is a family school,” said Joan.

UCLA boosters Rick Sarazen, Dan Rabanowitz and Dave and Diane Daly of Canoga Park had nothing more than a grassy patch to sit on near the Coliseum while they shared a six-pack of beer and divvied up a homemade turkey sandwich and a store-bought submarine sandwich.

Next to them, USC fan Ken Guardado of Hermosa Beach was helping to preside over a group relaxing in 10 folding chairs arranged around two huge picnic blankets. On hibachi grills, 20 pieces of chicken and 40 shrimp were sizzling. A huge vat of pasta salad had been tossed and a keg of beer was chilled in an ice-filled tub. The guys had prepared the food, said Guardado, a firefighter. He jokingly added that the women in the group could watch the grills and ice chests while the men hurried in to the game.

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Nearby, pipe-smoking USC rooter Tom Lytle, 92, was sitting down at a portable picnic table to a lunch of meatloaf and potato salad prepared by daughter-in-law Jean Lytle, a Superior Court judge from Palos Verdes. “The judge has done all the cooking. But the verdict isn’t in on the food yet--the family will be the jury,” she said with a laugh.

UCLA supporter Rudy Gonzales, an aerospace engineer who also lives in Palos Verdes, parked his 29-foot motor home a few feet from a stadium gate as he served up snacks from heated silver chafing dishes and poured drinks for his 30 guests. At game time, he switched on a color television set.

“I’ll clean up and pack everything away before I go on into the game,” he said.

Back at Eli Sandoval’s three coaches, there was rejoicing as word spread that the missing tickets had been located and nobody there would have to watch the game on TV.

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The mariachi band began playing with renewed vigor as Sandoval and friend Carlos Hernandez, of Whittier, handed out the tickets. Good thing, too, because nearby the USC band was practicing its halftime routine one last time before marching into the Coliseum.

“I was fighting with the post office all day Friday to get the tickets,” said Sandoval, 46, a utility company manager and UCLA rooter. “They were sent registered mail and they wouldn’t deliver them unless they were signed for. I was lucky to find the mailman carrying them.

“I was sweating bullets over the tickets, let me tell you.”