ROSE BOWL TRADITION IS SAFE; IRISH LOSS MEANS TRIP TO PASADENA IS OFF.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Traditionalists, rooting against Notre Dame for a change, got the result they wanted when USC won 10-0 in a less-than-classic renewal of the annual intersectional game. Now the Rose Bowl is safe from the Fighting Irish on New Year's Day.

The Coliseum certainly was safe from them Saturday night.

The Irish showed up in Los Angeles as a shell of a top-10 team, the worst in the country among teams that have a chance to win 10 games this season. Faint criticism, but standards are high in South Bend.

They had to play without senior quarterback Jarious Jackson, injured in last week's victory over LSU, and that made the difference that mattered. The difference was between scoring and getting shut out by the Trojans for the first time since 1962 or by anybody since Miami did it in 1987.

In Jackson's place the Irish started Eric Chappell, a junior who'd thrown one pass all year, and soon replaced him with Arnaz Battle, a freshman who'd thrown one pass all year and completed it. And you thought Arnaz Battle was something to do with Lucy's and Desi's divorce.

The Irish took 37 minutes of game time to record a complete pass, at which point this wasn't about waking the echoes, it was about waking the crowd.

``First of all, we have no excuses,'' Notre Dame coach Bob Davie, still wearing the light jacket that protected him from the after-storm dampness, said a few minutes after the final gun.

Which is coachspeak for: Don't forget to mention the inexperienced quarterbacks.

They were overmatched. USC coach Paul Hackett's musing during the week before the game that unfamiliarity with the quarterbacks would compromise his defense - that was coachspeak too.

``There's nothing you can do in five days,'' said Notre Dame offensive coordinator Jim Colletto, ``to get 'em to play at the level they'll eventually play at.''

Did they feel the pressure?

``I think that was pretty obvious,'' said Davie.

Not only did the Irish have no passing attack to speak of, completing 7 of 22 for 94 yards and throwing four interceptions, but they wound up with no rushing attack either.

USC moved its safeties up to the line of scrimmage, daring the Irish to throw, confident they wouldn't.

``They totally didn't respect the passing game,'' Jackson as he walked - stiffly on his sprained right knee - up the tunnel from the sideline to the locker room.

That wasn't a complaint, just a fact.

Even more than usual, Notre Dame turned into an option team. The options being: Gain three yards and fall down; or fall down behind the line and get it over with.

Slow and steady wasn't going to work against USC. Its defense has been hard to grind out long drives against, giving up only two scoring drives of more than 80 yards this season, each of those consisting almost entirely of one breakaway run.

For that matter, when the Irish defense, trying to carry the night, gave Battle and Chappell the ball in good field position, they found a way to mess up a good thing.

The Irish had the ball on their 43 to start their first drive. Tailback Autry Denson was stopped for no gain on first down and they went three-and-out. The Irish had the ball on USC's 14 to start their first drive of the second quarter. Battle ran to the goal line and fumbled the ball away, though a television replay showed this was really the referees' mistake, because the quarterback was down when the ball popped loose.

The Irish had the ball at their 42 with 1:14 left in the half and called two running plays, content to protect a 0-0 tie. The Irish had the ball at the USC 60 to start the second half and went backward before punting.

You get the idea.

The upshot of these three hours of Irish misery is twofold.

First is the fact USC, coming off its eighth straight loss to UCLA, can at least claim mastery of its other great rival after its third straight win over Notre Dame. Or a reasonable facsimile of Notre Dame.

Second is the fact Notre Dame won't be going to the Rose Bowl. Under the new bowl alignment - which we'll refrain from explaining here in an effort to conserve newsprint - Notre Dame could have been invited to Pasadena on Jan. 1 if Pacific-10 champion UCLA went instead to the national-title game in Tempe, Ariz., on Jan. 4.

The possibility inflamed fans of the Rose Bowl's Pac-10 vs. Big Ten tradition. Now it's more likely that Arizona will represent the Pac-10 in the Rose Bowl while the Irish (9-2) go slumming in the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., on Jan. 1.

If, as predicted, Jackson is healthy by then, they might be worth watching again.