COLLEGE FOOTBALL’S BIG SATURDAY

They’ll play for Bells and Buckets and Boots.

For championships and Cozza and Cups.

For Axes and acclaim.

For Drums and destiny.

For memories and madness.

For pride and Pettibone.

For bowls and bragging rights.

UCLA and USC for the Victory Bell? Sure, and there’s always the Los Angeles city championship involved, kind of a generation removed from Dorsey and San Pedro high schools. But UCLA is 4-6 and USC 5-5, and there are bigger fish to fry elsewhere than in the Rose Bowl this weekend.

It’s Rivalry Saturday, and if it’s a bit watered down now because of television’s demands that schedules be altered for the sake of ratings, well, there is still plenty at stake.

Take Arizona, which ABC did for granted, setting off the whole state by choosing to put on USC-UCLA, pandering to the Los Angeles market and leaving the desert to Fox Sports West.

That’s Arizona State, fourth-ranked in the country, 10-0 and on the way to the Rose Bowl. At Arizona, which is 5-5, but 5-0 at home.

“Now we’ve got ASU, but just because they’re 10-0 doesn’t mean . . . ,” said Arizona tackle Van Tuinei. “We’re not throwing in the towel.”

They did in Baton Rouge, where Louisiana State and Tulane no longer play for the Rag. Painted LSU purple and gold, and Tulane green and white, the Rag was thrown out after one game, when Tulane won back in days of yore.

The Ax has lasted longer for Stanford and California. Dating from 1899, when cheerleader Billy Erb showed it to fans at a baseball game, it’s the prize for the Big Game and a product of Stanford tradition and a cheer, “Give ‘Em the Ax.” It wasn’t given to Cal, but rather, was stolen in the dead of night, the handle cut off to make it easier to get it across the San Francisco Bay ferry.

Since 1931, it has been awarded to the winner of the Big Game, though Stanford is more concerned with the bowl bid probably due the winner of this year’s 99th renewal, at Berkeley.

If Stanford wins, it needs bowl help in Pullman, where Washington and Washington State play in the Apple Cup game.

How important is the rivalry?

Well, Washington State guard Dan Lynch had a handle on it in 1984: “There are four important stages in your life. You’re born, you play the Huskies, you get married and you die.”

A bit to the south, there is no trophy in Eugene, where Oregon and Oregon State play the Civil War. Once there was an award in the rivalry between the two schools, but it was for basketball, until then-Oregon Coach Dick Harter got tired of the whole thing--and the fourth loss to the Beavers in a season--and tripped a cheerleader carrying the Chancellor’s Trophy, which fell and was dented, setting off an uncivil war.

This season, Oregon and Oregon State may be playing for Beaver Coach Jerry Pettibone’s job. He has two years left on his contract, but Oregon State President Paul Risser has said that Pettibone’s future in Corvallis will be decided on Sunday.

With a 2-8 record, the future looks bleak.

Moving east, Utah and Brigham Young play for the Beehive Boot, old lace-up footwear owned by Utah for the last three seasons. Saturday’s game decides the Western Athletic Conference’s Mountain Division champion, which will play Wyoming in Las Vegas for the overall WAC title on Dec. 7.

Utah and BYU are 45 miles apart, but the distance and the Beehive Boot do not inhibit cross-pollination. Utah defensive coordinator Ken Schmidt played at BYU, and his Cougar counterpart, Kyle Whittingham, played at Utah.

In Columbia, Mo., there is a chance to even things up if Kansas can beat Missouri and win the Indian War Drum and square the Border War, 48-48-7, in the last game of a season for both 4-6 teams.

And sometime during the weekend, someone will remember that a former Jayhawk coach told his team that Quantrill’s Raiders burned Lawrence, Kan., during the War Between the States and that Quantrill was a Missouri alumnus, the former true, but the latter a patent--but conveniently inspirational--falsehood.

In West Lafayette, Ind., Purdue and Indiana play for the Old Oaken Bucket, found on the Bruner farm and cleaned up to become a trophy. Perhaps apropos of the two schools’ football programs, which have fallen on hard times, the first game for the Bucket was a 0-0 tie.

This year’s game will be the last for the coaches, Indiana’s Bill Mallory (who was fired) and Purdue’s Jim Colletto (who resigned).

Indiana is no stranger to vessels, having already played Kentucky for the Bourbon Barrel and Michigan State for the Brass Spittoon.

In Columbus, Ohio, there is no trophy, but none is necessary. Ohio State and Michigan usually play for bigger spoils: the Big Ten championship, and though Ohio State has already won it, and the right to play Arizona State in the Rose Bowl, there is plenty at stake.

The Buckeyes are 10-0 and ranked second in the country, but they were also unbeaten last season until losing to Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Former Michigan coach Bo Schembechler will be in Columbus with stories of games past, countered by friends of the late Buckeye coach Woody Hayes, who so hated Michigan that he once drove into the state to recruit a player, ran out of gas near the border on the return trip and pushed his car across the state line to refuel and deny Michigan some tax pennies.

USC and UCLA claim their rivalry is the closest in college football geographically, about 10 miles apart, but Duke’s campus in Durham, N.C., is only eight miles from North Carolina’s in Chapel Hill, and the traffic will be easier on Saturday when North Carolina, with Manhattan Beach quarterback Chris Keldorf, plays at Duke for the Victory Bell in a game that dates from Nov. 29, 1888.

Duke says it was the first played south of the Mason-Dixon line.

“They never get anything right over there,” said Rick Brewer, North Carolina’s associate athletic director. “They claim we are 11 miles apart. And the first game was us against Wake Forest.”

That was earlier in the 1888 season.

But it was played under different rules, said those at Duke, who must win Saturday to prevent their first winless season since 1894, when they lost their only game, 28-0, to North Carolina.

The other Carolina--and the other USC--has a rivalry of its own, South Carolina against Clemson, which was played on Big Thursday in Columbia until 1960, when Clemson wised up, demanded a game in Death Valley and won it, 12-2.

It’s a game in which the entire state takes sides, and if a city council considers a measure near the Clemson-South Carolina game, and if there are three Tigers on the council and two Gamecocks, the vote is going to be 3-2.

“It’s tough to get anything passed this week,” admitted Kerry Tharp, South Carolina’s sports information director.

And in Birmingham, Ala., students will gather in Legion Field two hours before game time to hear rock music and get angry.

Alabama must beat Auburn to claim the Southeastern Conference’s Western Division championship and the right to play Florida for the SEC title.

But that’s arithmetic. The game is played one day a year and talked about for 364, except among some neighbors, who do not speak to each other if their collegiate allegiances collide.

The music will be softer in Cambridge, Mass., where tailgate parties replete with violins and candelabra celebrate the Yale Future Presidents and Harvard Future Supreme Court Justices playing for the 113th time, and no, Carm Cozza didn’t coach in the first one, in 1875.

But he is coaching Yale in the game for the 32nd and last time.

And at Easton, Pa., Lehigh’s Engineers and Lafayette’s Leopards will hold their 132nd game.

UCLA-USC? The first Lehigh-Lafayette game was played in 1884, when Los Angeles was still a few blocks of adobes and you could get a train ticket from the Midwest to settle in Southern California for $1.

No rivalry in college football has been played more often.