A MIX OF PIGSKINS AND PICKLE JUICE.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

It's time to raise a glass and drink a toast to the pleasant surprises of the always-unpredictable start of the football season. My tumbler stands ready on my desk, filled to the brim with pickle juice.

Yes, pickle juice, the less-than-appetizing elixer that powered the Philadelphia Eagles to their blowout-of-the-week victory over the Dallas Cowboys. Owing to its apparent effectiveness in warding off cramps while the Eagles were running around in the 109-degree heat of Texas Stadium last Sunday, pickle juice suddenly is all the rage in the nation's locker rooms.

The Eagles said only one of their players experienced cramps during the game and only five required intravenous fluids afterward. In Texas, in September, that's considered progress.

So now the University of Georgia has said it's supplying pickle juice to its football players before practices and will give it to them before today's game at South Carolina, believing the salt and nutrients combat the cramps that struck several Bulldogs in their opener.

``We're going with that pickle juice,'' Georgia coach Jim Donnan said, perhaps mindful that if the experiment doesn't go well, his players will have a bye week to get their digestive systems back in shape.

Eagles trainer Rick Burkholder said he has been besieged by other teams inquiring about the proper application of pickle power. Burkholder's comments appeared in a press release Friday announcing that Vlasic has signed on as the - hold on for the inevitable - official pickle of the Eagles.

Naturally you wonder if UCLA and USC will tap into pickle juice in order to gain every advantage in their home games against Colorado and Fresno State today, or if the Bruins and Trojans have grown complacent aftertheir 1-0 starts. Their trainers say thank you very much, but they'll stick with water, salt pills, Gatorade and other more conventional supplements.

USC head athletic trainer Russ Romano noted that pickle juice is scientifically unproven. Also, it's only fair to point out, Gatorade is a Trojans sponsor.

``(The pickle-juice solution) has been floating around for years and years, and every once in a while it pops up again,'' said Geoff Schaadt, UCLA's director of athletic training and rehabilitation. Another pregame panacea he keeps hearing about: Alka-Seltzer.

Schaadt didn't even want to ponder this question: Dill? Sweet? Kosher?

He said Bruins players have been asking him about pickle juice all week and he sounded weary of the subject. I told him the answer to his problem is simple: Let the players taste the stuff and they'll never ask again.

After a sip of the juice from a jar of slow-cured dill pickles, all I can say is a.) it's saltier than a Bobby Knight halftime speech, and b.) its taste isn't quite as unappealing as its appearance. If you happened to leave your glass of cloudy yellow liquid unattended, there's very little risk somebody else will drink it.

Anyway, pickle-juice toasts seem appropriate for the stars of the first couple of weeks of this NFL and college season, the intriguing portion of the schedule when you discover every year that half of everything you believed about football is untrue.

A toast to the Pacific 10.

If you read some of the articles about the Pac-10's embarrassments in 1999, you might have gotten the impression the conference was about to fold. Then it started the 2000 season 7-0 against the rest of the nation, including USC's and UCLA's victories over ranked teams.

What's to add, except to say the Pac-10 also held its own in the NFL, with the top four quarterbacks in total offensive yardage last Sunday being Cade McNown (UCLA and the Chicago Bears, 377 yards passing and running), Jake Plummer (Arizona State and the Arizona Cardinals, 341), Mark Brunnell (Washington and the Jacksonville Jaguars, 306) and Chris Chandler (Washington and the Atlanta Falcons, 276).

A toast to the road teams.

Visitors beat the point spread in 12 of the 15 NFL games in the opening week. If they continue to do well, this will suggest a solution to Los Angeles' stadium problem. Forget a stadium, just put together a team and let it play every game on the road.

A toast to a new generation of pro quarterbacks.

Stoney Case, Daunte Culpepper, Jay Fiedler, Donovan McNabb - I don't know who any of you are, but you were winners last week, and it's your turn to show off. If Troy Aikman's concussion sidelines him, and if Brett Favre's elbow sidelines him, it will mean that none of the Super Bowl- winning quarterbacks of the 1990s is active.

A toast to Dennis Miller.

I was feeling left out, unable to join in the Miller-bashing because I wanted so badly for a smart, irreverent guy to succeed. And then . . . Christo, Romulus and Remus, and ``Hey, Skittles!''

A toast to the Eagles.

Duce Staley, an improved defense and that magic potion. The Eagles might be the St. Louis Rams of 2000, assuming the Rams are done with the label.

That's all for now. Half a glass of this stuff and I'm starting to think cramps would be preferable.

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