PETROS SPOTLIGHTS `PARANOIA'.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH Media

Maybe it's just a matter of semantics. Maybe Fox Sports Net reporter Petros Papadakis really wasn't banned from the UCLA campus this week when the cable network's producers inquired about the chances of sending him to Westwood to do a story for its USC-UCLA football rivalry-week coverage.

Papadakis, the former USC running back who has become something of a local media phenomenon the past few years, was told as much Monday, he said as he tried to explain how he was pulled from interviewing Bruins twin defensive ends Mat and Dave Ball. The piece was eventually done by Matt Stevens, the former UCLA quarterback who also works for FSN, and aired on Tuesday's ``Southern California Sports Report.''

``I think I was banned,'' Papadakis said. ``That's what I was told.''

Marc Dellins, UCLA's longtime sports-information director, explained it this way: Initially, FSN asked whether Sean Farnham, a former Bruins basketball player, could do the Ball twins story for the network's ``UCLA Sports Magazine'' show. Then Dellins was told Stevens would do it so it also could be used on the 10 p.m. nightly news show.

Last Friday, when FSN asked whether Papadakis could do the story instead, Dellins admits he told them he ``didn't need him to come here since he hasn't been, how shall I say, very kind to our head coach.''

``He wasn't banned from campus - he was on the air from the Bruin Bear statue with the rest of the Fox anchors Tuesday night,'' Dellins said.

``I didn't think it was the best idea to have him interview our players this week. He's Fox's USC commentator. It'd be like me sending one of our former players over there just to get some kind of reaction.''

And this all was before Papadakis took a cardboard cutout dressed up as UCLA coach Karl Dorrell and strutted it around Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica for a piece of intended humor that aired on Monday night's ``SCSR.''

But in a week where emotions run high, where trash talking is elevated, where things are said in the heat of battle, it's about time the local TV media got caught up in everything, with or without a script to follow.

``I don't have a problem with anyone over there,'' Papadakis said Thursday after finishing his KMPC-AM 1540 morning radio show. ``It's just funny how they can't get out of their own way sometimes. They've got enough problems with how to handle the media at practices and how they issue press passes. They're just overmatched. They've created paranoia, an us-against-the-world mentality, acting like they've been backed into a corner.

``Actually, it's just funny to watch them squirm.''

--To dye for: The multicolored hairdo Papadakis sports this week, the result of losing an on-air bet with Stevens for their picking Pacific-10 Conference football games throughout the year, looks like a cross between a melted Popsicle and a Hot Dog On A Stick hat: blue on one side, yellow in the middle, and red on the other.

The bet specified only that Papadakis dye his hair Bruins colors, which he did Tuesday at a shop in Encino. He added the Trojans red on the other side since no one told him he couldn't.

Hey, he's got to live with it, not us.

``I do look like a circus clown, and I hate clowns,'' said Papadakis, who also has to wear Stevens' powder-blue 1983 Rose Bowl jersey while on camera this week. ``I was driving home after having it done, and I felt like Judge Reinhold in `Fast Times at Ridgemont High,' where he's wearing the pirate hat from the fast-food place he worked at, and he thinks some girl in another car is checking him out. Then he realizes that she's just laughing at him because he looks stupid. I do look hideous, but a bet's a bet and I honor my bets.''

Stevens, predicting a 21-19 UCLA victory, will have one final faceoff with Papadakis when FSN goes live with a postgame show Saturday afternoon.

--The poll question: ESPN ``College GameDay'' analyst Kirk Herbstreit, the former Ohio State quarterback who lives in Columbus, Ohio, and will be with his Corso-lovin' cohorts at Ann Arbor, Mich., before Saturday's Buckeyes-Wolverines matchup, has gone on the record as saying USC - and not his alma mater - deserves to be ranked No. 2 in the Bowl Championship Series polls.

``If you are asking me, from August to today, who is a better football team, I'll tell you USC is more complete,'' Herbstreit told Dan Patrick on Monday's ESPN ``SportsCenter.'' ``It's unfortunate the system is not working out to their advantage.''

Keith Jackson, whom ABC will fly out to cover that game (9 a.m., Channel 7) instead of USC-UCLA, agrees with Herbstreit.

``But then, I'm biased. I'm a Westerner,'' he said.

If USC is trumped by Ohio State for the right to go to the national-championship game, likely against Oklahoma, Jackson thinks that could be the final straw that forces a permanent change in the entire system.

``The demand (to change it) will become huge, especially in a major media market (Los Angeles) that is very selfish about its teams,'' he said.

Loren Matthews, ABC's senior vice president of programming, views the national-championship chatter this way: ``Obviously, it creates a lot of controversy. When you're in TV, that's not necessarily bad as long as you spell ABC and BCS right.''

CAPTION(S):

box

Box:

SOUND BITES

- Tom Hoffarth