ALLIANCE OFFERS PLENTY OF DUDS FOR HOLIDAY VIEWING : STATION BREAK WHAT SMOKES.

Byline: Tom Hoffarth

'Twas the day after Christmas

And all through the mall,

The ``return'' lines were endless;

What ingrates - what gall!

If there was such a place as ``Alliance R Us,'' refund-seekers could form a procession that wrapped 97 times around the building.

Ever since the college football think tank tanked on this season's TV college bowl lineup - a no-assembly-required collection of mismatches that is the wrong size, wrong color, has missing pieces and directions that make no sense - the PR suits at ABC, CBS, ESPN and TBS have been trying to make the best of it.

No, we don't have Notre Dame, USC or UCLA. But how about Virginia, West Virginia and Virginia Tech?

North Carolina, Kansas State, and a Northwestern team only one year removed from its Cinderella season?

This grand illusion of an alliance with its trickle-down effect has soiled everything. This isn't a bowl lineup; it's a lineup of purse-snatchers and money-launderers straight from the 12th Precinct.

It's a traditional event best looked at in a rear-view mirror, one that has the disclaimer at the bottom: ``Games May Appear to be Larger Then Actual Size.''

There has to be a way to at least get a rain check out of this mess and give the networks more time to exert some of influence, make someone re-arrange things.

That doesn't sound like it's going to happen.

``It's probably the most exciting lineup we've had at ABC in four years,'' proclaims ABC Sports vice president of programming David Downs, giving a loving gaze back at the '93 Sugar Bowl that resulted in Alabama winning a ``national title'' against Miami.

ABC, which started its holiday bowl converge with the Christmas Day bonanza of the Blue-Gray All-Star game and a Navy home game against Cal from the Pearl Harbor Bowl, continues with Wednesday's Florida Citrus Bowl (Tennessee-Northwestern) and the Rose Bowl (No. 5 Ohio State vs. No. 2 Arizona State), capped off with Thursday's touted national-title Sugar Bowl (No. 3 Florida vs. No. 1 Florida State).

CBS, which had its close-as-you're-gonna-get-it title tilt last year, has scooped up the Cotton (Alliance-snubbed BYU vs. Kansas State) and Fiesta (Penn State-Texas) bowls to go with a spectacular New Year's Eve edition of the non-Hancock Sun (Michigan State-Stanford) and Orange (Virginia Tech-Nebraska) bowls.

From there, the bottom-feeders at ESPN and TBS have their marketing departments inflate the importance of games like the Wisconsin-Utah slap-fight in the Tarnex Copper Bowl, just one of the many huge matchups during ``Thrifty Car Rental Bowl Week''

The operative word there is ``thrifty.''

It's like Alicia Silverstone said in the movie ``Clueless'' going into a driving test that she would miserably fail: ``I have this overwhelming sense of ickiness.''

The operative word there is ``clueless.''

ABC loves the fact that there's really kinda two national title games of interest - and it has them both.

One won't cancel out the importance of the other, Downs said, referring to two years ago when the Orange Bowl had unbeaten Nebraska going for a ``national title'' while unbeaten Penn State was doing the same at the Rose Bowl. Nebraska, for whatever reason, got the final No. 1.

``Both games got ratings in the 18s,'' said Downs. ``It's the same story this year, and frankly, that's a win for us in both situations. If ASU wins, then there's added interest in the Sugar Bowl. If not, it's a winner-take-all game a night later.

``If you're a college football fan, it'd be tough not to love that.''

I'm a college football fan, and I want a national playoff. Sponsored by ASAP.

Even though ABC has offered up the Rose Bowl to be included in the so-called Super Alliance two years from now, it won't matter.

``A playoff system, in the long run, is a pretty darn interesting event for those who televise college football,'' Downs admitted, ``but it will be a long time before politics will be sorted out. In the interim, this is probably the best solution.''

Downs, obviously, refuses to see a down side to any of this.

On the other hand, fresh-faced Craig James, the first-year CBS college football studio analyst who moved over from ESPN, is the perfect guy to be running the Complaint Department counter.

``All these knuckleheads running around out there in the back rooms, making decisions for college football, putting a ceiling on top of it . . . I completely disagree with it. I will say it to the face of every one of the committee members, that they're not doing a justifiable service for college football.''

You go, Craig. Keep talkin'.

``For the first time in seven years of covering college football I've had a chance to watch the system. But this year in the studio in New York (for the Alliance Bowl selection show), seeing that committee walk in there - knowing they're the handful of men that control college football right now - it doesn't work.

``The Alliance doesn't work. The Super Alliance isn't going to work.''

Keith Jackson is going to work. The Sugar Bowl game, that is.

Just ask him how thrilled he is about a Florida State-Florida nightmare-come-true rematch.

You could pinch him. Real hard. It'll take away his pain.

``I'm not fond of rematches,'' he grumbled. ``Rematches don't prove a lot. (FSU coach) Bobby Bowden was right when he says `we whooped 'em once.'

``But I guess it's to (Bowden's) advantage to go play No. 3 since he can't play No. 2. It's part of the problem with this bowl arrangement.

``Historically, the team that lost the first game often wins the rematch, so when you get down to shuckin' the corn, what have you proved? You're 1-1.''

Meaning not only are both teams losers, but everyone else loses out as well.

And if the scenario plays out where ASU loses, then FSU loses, you've got five teams with one loss all claiming some sort of title consideration.

Who's going to get the rights fee to televise that mess?

``I know I won't live long enough to see a true playoff system,'' said Jackson.

Welcome to the game of life, where satisfaction is never guaranteed, no matter how low you set your expectations.

And no matter how long you wait in line to return the favor.

Both NBC's Summer Olympics coverage (at No. 3) and John Tesh's Olympics performance (at No. 4) nearly reached the apex of Spy magazine's list of the 100 worst people, places and things of 1996. Among NBC's misdeeds, the magazine notes: ``When not openly badmouthing athletes' homelands, NBC paid about as much attention to medalists from other countries as would generally seem appropriate for ball girls at the U.S. Open.'' To put it into perspective, Mad Cow Disease (No. 20), Marge Schott (No. 38), the Macarena (No. 40), Mike Tyson's fights (No. 75), Yankee kid fan Jeffrey Maier (No. 80), Dennis Rodman (No. 88), Madonna's baby (No. 91), the phrase ``Don't go there'' (No. 93) and O.J. Simpson (No. 100) weren't in the same area code.

Cinema imitates insincerity for Roy ``Mr. Saturday Afternoon'' Firestone. In two appearances as ``himself'' in the new Tom Cruise flick, ``Jerry Maguire,'' our favorite vaudevillian seems to play along with writer/director Cameron Crowe's script that mocks the way he waves chopped onions under the eyes of his guest to make them bawl like babies. Unfortunately, Roy forgot to wear the trademark purple velvet sport coat, which guarantees moist eyes by itself.

Maguire Part II: There's some grumblings at ESPN, notably by Chris ``Cinemascope'' Berman, who got into character to shoot a couple of scenes for the movie but wound up flopping on the cutting-room floor. ESPN, which averages a mention about every 13-1/2 minutes during the based-on-a-true-lie flick, must be content with cameos by such non-noteworthy figures as trite Mike Tirico and smelly Mel Kiper Jr.

Lisa Leslie's broadcasting future. Her commentary on last weekend's USC-Long Beach State women's contest for Fox Sports West was extremely pleasant, not overbearing and insightful - an approach her former USC coach, Cheryl Miller, might try next time she's given the opportunity to work an NBA game for TNT.

The Christmas card sent out this year by KWNK-AM's Joe McDonnell. Posing with former NBA great Wilt Chamberlain, a live in-studio guest on a show two weeks ago, McDonnell's card wishes seasons greetings ``from The Big Dipper and The Big Nasty.''

What chokes

NBC Sports chief Dick Ebersol as the leading man on The Sporting News' annual 100 most important sports figures. (See first item, ``What Smokes.'')

The new TV-friendly 'tude at Sports Illustrated. The introduction of a weekly two-page spread highlighting the upcoming week of televised sport of course coincides with the birth of the CNN/SI all-sports news cable channel. So now TV is good, SI tells us. Which all but squashes any chance this bastion of journalism hiring a new media columnist, which has been absent for the last few years since it decided Norman Chad's weekly essay-it-like-it-is wasn't advertiser-friendly.

``Basketball's Balanced Offense,'' a book released recently by Masters Press ($12.95, 112 pages) written (and financed) by then-UCLA coach Jim Harrick. It won't make anyone forget John Wooden's ``They Call Me Coach,'' but if you're a hoop coach trying to implement the UCLA offense (attention: Steve Lavin) just follow the diagrams. And there's photos, like on page 136, where Charles O'Bannon and Cameron Dollar demonstrate the side post delay . . . HEY, doesn't the inclusion of current student/athletes in a profit-making publication violate some NCAA rule? Check Harrick's expense account.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

Photo: Tesh

Box: Station Break (see text)