MAGUIRE GOES BACK TO SCHOOL.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH MEDIA

Don't laugh, but when Traveler comes bounding through the Coliseum tunnel before Saturday's USC-Cal football game, ABC's Paul Maguire could be the one blazing high in the saddle with a helmet-cam strapped to his lid.

But probably not.

``I don't think the horse is strong enough to carry me,'' he said.

Or, that the 68-year-old is quite crazy enough to do that.

More likely, he'll have the next best seat in the place: On that raised platform cart-cam that runs along the visitors' sideline, feeding his observations during the national telecast to play-by-play man Brad Nessler and fellow analyst Bob Griese as the important Pacific-10 Conference game unfolds.

At a time when he could have easily been kicked to the curb or decided to retire following ESPN's decision to break up the NFL Sunday Night team that he had been a part of for the previous eight seasons, Maguire has been remastered into this Rodney Dangerfield character from ``Back To School,'' a real wild-card element for the ABC/ESPN college football coverage this season.

Most of the credit for that belongs to producer Bob Goodrich, who piqued Maguire's interest in trying new things this season -- such as move him into an end-zone seat (which he did on a Georgia Tech-Virginia Tech broadcast) or stationed inside the broadcast production truck to break down replays (that was last week for Ohio State-Northwestern).

``I know (Nessler and Griese) were freezing their buns off and I was in my Hawaiian shirt in 75-degree temperature in the truck,'' Maguire said of that last experience. ``That might have been my least favorite place to watch a game because the monitors are so small, but I also think that every broadcaster should watch a game from that truck to see what they're doing in there. This is my 36th year of football, and I never learned more than I did in the truck.''

Goodrich said he had never met Maguire until a network seminar in August, and thought right then he'd ask if he'd be willing to try some new, out-of-the-booth thinking.

``The most important thing here was, we weren't trying to say, `Hey look, this is cool,' we were trying to help him do a good job and make it also seamless with three announcers,'' said Goodrich, a former ABC ``Monday Night Football'' producer. ``Not many could do what Paul did without stepping on other people. He deserves the credit, as well as Brad and Bob, for making it work from the viewer's standpoint.''

``It's a group effort,'' said Maguire. ``We just want to make sure we're not doing something really stupid.''

Maguire's jovial personality has always come through on the broadcasts, to some viewer's dismay. But that's probably what also makes this experiment on the college telecasts feasible, conveying that different vibe that fans of this game get as opposed to the somewhat stuffiness of the NFL.

As a player, he might be best known as a former punter/ linebacker with the original LosAngeles Chargers and Buffalo Bills of the old American Football League, but Maguire was also a heralded tight end at The Citadel, leading the nation with 11 touchdown receptions in 1959 when he was a third-team AP All-American.

Maguire did college games for ESPN from 1980-86, including the '84 Holiday Bowl in SanDiego that gave BYU the eventual national championships after its win over Michigan. Combining his NFL broadcast career at ESPN and NBC -- he did two Super Bowls for the latter -- it had been 18 years since Maguire did a college game before this season. The experience seems to have invigorated him.

``It seems I've always been given an opportunity through broadcasting to move on to something better,'' he said. ``In college football, you're in towns where they don't even care about pro football, where they don't even know if Peyton Manning is the quarterback with Indianapolis. They just care about their team.

``It's the damndest thing I've ever experienced and I've loved ever single minute of it.''

Herbstreit: I'm no biased Buckeye

Kirk Herbstreit knows what you're thinking: Aformer Ohio State quarterback can't possibly pretend to be a detached, unbiased analyst while working for ABC on the coverage of a game featuring the No. 1 Buckeyes against the No. 2 Michigan Wolverines to decide who ends up in the BCS' national championship game come early January.

``It's natural for people to wonder that, but considering I've done (ESPN's) `College GameDay' for 11 years and been broadcasting games for seven years, I can do my job and evaluate a game not looking at what school I happened to attend,'' said Herbstreit, the Buckeyes' 1992 co-captain. ``I really don't have a hidden agenda. I take my job a little more seriously than the fact that I went to a certain school.''

In the five seasons that Herbstreit attended Ohio State, the Buckeyes were 0-4-1 against Michigan -- that 13-13 tie he produced in his senior year and led to the famous quote by then OSU president E. Gordon Gee: ``A tie is one of our greatest wins ever.''

The 37-year-old Herbstreit couldn't have been luckier to do his first Ohio State- Michigan game. He said he has been following this rivalry ``since I've been breathing. It sounds sick, but all I've lived for my entire life is watching that game.''

ABC's super-sized hour-long pregame at 11:30 a.m. leads into the call by Brent Musburger, Bob Davie and Herbstreit. The Sports USA Radio network has the game (heard on KLAC-AM 570) with Larry Kahn, John Robinson and Troy West.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, 2 boxes

Photo:

(1) Paul Maguire spent eight years on ESPN's ``Sunday Night'' NFL crew before going back to college football telecasts.

Rich Arden/ESPN

(2) HERBSTREIT

Box:

(1) WHAT SMOKES

(2) WHAT CHOKES