MEMO TO TRUMPY.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

To: Bob Trumpy 

C/O: NBC television

From: The UCLA football team

Dear Bob:

We've been holding our tongues for four weeks. This is something we'd advise you to try in the future.

But before you open your mouth again, we'd like to point to our 52-28 win over Washington Saturday at the Rose Bowl as incontrovertible proof of our existence.

Last month you blithely informed your NBC audience during the telecast of the USC-Notre Dame game, ``USC is the only football team in town worth talking about.''

Nothing an opponent has thrown at us all season caught us on the back of our heels more than your words.

Skip Hicks, our record-setting tailback, happened to be watching the game and he caught your comments, sure as he did that 67-yard touchdown pass from Cade McNown in the second quarter Saturday that gave us the lead for good at 21-20.

Hicks is your stereotypical laid-back Southern Californian, even if he did grow up in Texas. So instead of throwing something at the television set, he simply laughed.

After burning the Huskies for 147 yards and four touchdowns - the same 13th-ranked Huskies squad, mind you, that dismantled the USC Trojans 27-0 two weeks ago - he graciously let you off the hook, saying, ``He doesn't know any better. He probably didn't mean what he said. It just came out.''

For your information, Hicks eclipsed by one the Pacific-10 Conference single-season touchdown record (23) that USC's Marcus Allen set in 1981 and Washington's Corey Dillon matched last season. He also tied ex-Trojan Charles White's Pac-10 career scoring record of 53 touchdowns.

Call us cocky, but we're confident he'll pass White Saturday against USC in the only game in town worth talking about.

We've beaten the Trojans the past six years, in case you haven't noticed.

Granted, it took us two overtimes to hold off ``the only football team in town worth talking about'' 48-41 and win our fifth and final game last year.

Unfortunately, when it came time to rank teams this year, so-called experts such as yourself seemed to give far more weight to our six 1996 losses. That's the only way we could explain how USC was ranked 23rd in the preseason rankings and we weren't ranked at all.

Before a game was played, we kept hearing how great USC's offensive line was going to be, how potent its running attack was going to be, how stingy its defense was going to be, how the Trojans were oh-so fortunate to be returning an All-America kicker in Jim Wren.

So forgive us if we digress for a moment to applaud our outstanding offensive line that has opened gaping holes for Hicks these last few weeks and didn't let the vaunted Washington defense sack McNown once.

We'd also like to acknowledge the 1,025 yards Hicks has collected for a 103-yard average and salute our defense, which leads the nation in turnover margin and has yielded only nine second-half touchdowns all year, including one in garbage time Saturday.

Oh, and did we mention that junior Chris Sailer, who is handling our punting, place-kicking and kickoff duties, is one of three finalists for the Lou Groza Golden Toe Award?

Sailer is smart - he is one of three players on our team who has been nominated for the Academic All-America team. He understands that our program has to fight and claw for every column inch of recognition, given that our school boasts 11 NCAA basketball titles, the last of which was won after our last Rose Bowl appearance in 1994.

``I think right now Coach (Bob) Toledo is building a program that's turning that around,'' Sailer said.

The about-face isn't happening quickly enough for some of us (we are the E-mail generation, after all).

Senior outside linebacker Danjuan Magee took his wrath out on the Huskies, counting seven unassisted tackles among his season-high total of nine, and then he turned his indignation on all the non-believers out there, of which we consider you high on the list.

``I guess we've got to beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl if we're to get the respect we want,'' Magee said.

Of course, the road to the Rose Bowl runs through the L.A. Coliseum. The Trojans (6-4, 4-3) aren't going to win the conference title and we won't wear the crown, either, unless we beat USC and Washington defeats Washington State.

We don't care much for the Trojans, in case you've been too caught up in the USC-Notre Dame rivalry to notice.

``I think UCLA is the hard-working, blue-collar team,'' Magee said. ``USC is kind of like the bourgeois boys. They've got a good tradition. (But) all those days are over. They've got to produce now. We own L.A. right now. We call the shots.''

We know we've still got our work cut out for us, even if we are 6-1 in conference and ranked No. 9 with a bullet nationally. But we can tell we're starting to win people over. We had a crowd of 85,697 at the Rose Bowl Saturday. They were so loud, we couldn't hear ourselves celebrate. We especially liked it when they broke into the chant, ``Beat S-C,'' with about a minute to play.

``I haven't seen a crowd like that since my freshman year when I played in the Rose Bowl,'' Hicks said.

We wish you could have experienced if for yourself. But we hope the 38-0 run we went on in a 30-minute stretch beginning in the second quarter to break the game wide open opened some eyes, yours chief among them. Hicks was speaking for all of us when he said, ``This sends a message all over the country that we're one of the best teams in the country right now.''