DON'T COUNT ANY TEAM OUT OF CONFERENCE RACE.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

They held the Pacific-10 Conference football media day, the first official event of the 1998 season, in a fancy Los Angeles airport hotel Tuesday. They should have held it in a 7-Eleven, with coaches, players and reporters huddled around the lottery dispenser.

At the very least, they should have found a hotel with a casino. Because lately, Pac-10 football seems to be a game of chance. And just once, I'd like to watch the spin of the wheel, the roll of the dice or the cut of the cards that determines the champion.

In the past six years, six different schools have represented the Pac-10 in the Rose Bowl. Even Oregon and Washington State. In the same span, nine different Pac-10 schools have ended the season in the Associated Press top 25. Even Cal and Stanford.

The conference slogan ought to be, ``Who's next?''

Oregon State, of course, suspects the whole thing is rigged. But everybody else in the league has reason for optimism with exactly a month to go before the season begins in earnest Sept. 5.

Usually, you laugh when last year's cellar-dwellers brag about having most of their starters returning. And when last year's champion smiles about how wholesale graduations have made room for young talent. And when every single coach talks about how more of his players than ever spent the summer in the weight room.

In the Pac-10, you don't laugh.

``Our conference is very, very balanced,'' said Mike Riley, the former USC and Cal assistant who is about to begin his second season as Oregon State's head coach. ``Everybody's picking UCLA and Arizona State to win it, but there's no reason somebody else in the conference couldn't rise up.''

Part of the media-day festivities is the release of the preseason poll of reporters who cover the Pac-10. Thirty writers voted this time. Sixteen picked UCLA to win. Fourteen picked ASU. Totaling up the 1-to-10 votes, UCLA emerged as a narrow favorite over ASU. Washington is a distant third, USC is fourth and defending champion Washington State is seventh.

Understand, though, that Washington State was seventh in the poll a year ago. And that the poll has forecast the eventual winner only once in the past five years. And that three times in the past five years, the eventual champion was picked in the bottom half of the poll.

Throwing darts might be more accurate.

You might think that's a reflection on the voters. I prefer to think it's a reflection on the conference.

``It must be difficult to stay on top, because nobody's been able to do it,'' said Bruce Snyder, who was the national coach of the year in 1996, when he led ASU to a surprising Pac-10 title. ``I've never done it.''

Snyder counts it as a minor victory that ASU finished third in the conference in 1997, which is as high as any defending champion has finished since Washington threepeated in 1990-91-92.

The days when you could automatically pencil in USC, UCLA and Washington at the top of the Pac-10 - those three schools went to 21 out of 22 Rose Bowls starting in 1973 - are long gone.

In fact, Snyder has a simple explanation for the parity or ``flattening out'' of the Pac-10, which is not that the rest of the league has gotten stronger but that the traditional powers haven't recruited as effectively as they once did.

``Twenty years ago, the best players in Los Angeles would go to 'SC or UCLA,'' Snyder said. They're increasingly scattered across the country.

``I think we're losing players to schools to the east of us. We don't get our good ones, and they're taking our good ones,'' Snyder said.

Now, the Pac-10 is an annual crapshoot.

USC and ASU can win it because they have the deepest supply of wide receivers, the league's hottest position. UCLA can win it because it has Cade McNown, the nation's most efficient quarterback last season.

Arizona can win it because you never know with a young team. Washington can win it because Brock Huard can always find somebody to throw to. Washington State can win it because it's so darned quick.

Cal can win it because, for the first time in four years, it didn't change offensive or defensive coordinators. Stanford can win it because it remembers the hurt of last year's underachievement.

Oregon can win it because the league's worst defense should be improved. And Oregon State?

``We have recent examples of the fact schools from a non-urban environment can rise up and win,'' Riley said, explaining why ``I have not wavered in my confidence in what we can get done.''

So they plunge back into the lottery. Hey, somebody has to win.