SOCAL'S SECRET WILL BE REVEALED ON SATURDAY.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Let's keep this a secret, just between you and me and everybody else in L.A. County. Let's stay as quiet as we can about what's going on here Saturday.

As quiet as 150,000 people can be.

Whatever you do, don't tell the rest of the country. That would be the end of our carefully crafted image as a city that's too big, too busy, too cool to get excited about college football.

Read this, then burn it.

USC is close to selling out the 92,000 Coliseum seats for its game against Arkansas on Saturday night, which would be the Trojans' largest home crowd ever for a meeting with an unranked non-rival.

UCLA is (conservatively, I think) projecting a crowd of 55,000 at the Rose Bowl for its game against Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon, not bad for a match-up nobody envisioned as competitive when the month began.

If you're gung-ho, and you don't mind battling the traffic getting out of the Rose Bowl and into the Coliseum, you can catch all of the following in person in one day.

One reigning national champion, USC.

One reigning national-championship-game punching bag, Oklahoma.

Two nationally ranked teams, No. 1 USC and No. 21 Oklahoma.

Four programs with national-championship histories, USC (which claims 11 national titles), Oklahoma (seven), Arkansas (one, in 1964) and UCLA (one, the UPI share of a split in 1954).

One reigning Heisman Trophy winner, Matt Leinart.

Three Heisman finalists (last year) and leading Heisman candidates (this year), Leinart, Reggie Bush and Oklahoma's Adrian Peterson.

Impressive.

But here's the most impressive prospect of all.

One-hundred fifth thousand fans.

It's possible.

USC will get its 90,000-plus for the 1-0 Trojans' home opener and Leinart's first Coliseum appearance as Heisman winner, you can count on that. UCLA should approach 60,000 as the 2-0 Bruins try to beat a ranked opponent for only the second time in their past dozen tries.

The two local teams are likely to produce their highest combined single-day attendance ever.

Through 1981, of course, UCLA and USC both played in the Coliseum, so the only time they were both in town on the same Saturday was when they faced each other. In 1982, though, UCLA struck out on its own and made the Rose Bowl in Pasadena its home.

Since then, the Bruins and Trojans have played home games on the same day once, twice or three times most years. They've combined for 140,000-plus twice, on Sept. 23, 1989 when No. 24 UCLA lost to No. 5 Michigan in front of 71,797 fans and No. 12 USC beat No. 12 Ohio State in front of 69,876 (total: 141,673), and last Oct. 9 when No. 1 USC beat No. 7 Cal in front of 90,008 and UCLA beat Arizona in front of 57,638 (add it up: 147,646).

If this is an L.A. record for combined attendance for two big-time college football programs, it's got to be a national record. We're the only city that has two big-time college football programs.

USC has been No. 1 since December 2003, UCLA was a national contender as recently as 1998. But people around the country don't think of college football when they think of Los Angeles.

It's like one of those ``Which of These Don't Belong?'' tests: a) Movie stars; b) Beaches; c) Freeway chases; d) Wacked-out juries; e) Pom-poms, fight songs and tailgate barbecue.

Pete Carroll knows how everybody else looks at Southern California. The San Francisco native has held coaching jobs in seven other states.

``As a Californian, I take great pride in how excited we get about football in this part of the country,'' the USC head coach said. ``The rest of the country doesn't think we get pumped up about college football.''

It's not often that USC will play the less important football game in town, but that's the case this week. UCLA, which has scored 107 points in wins over San Diego State and Rice, can jump into the top 25 with a win over Oklahoma, which looks vulnerable after its opening loss to TCU, its early struggles against Tulsa, and Peterson's suspension from practice for missing class.

For our little left-hand corner of the map to truly become the center of the college football universe, both teams need to be good at once again. If that happens, look out.

Could L.A. go for twin sellouts one Saturday soon, 90,000-plus in the Coliseum, 90,000-plus in the Rose Bowl?

As if we didn't have enough problems with the television shots of sun-splashed Rose Bowl games on New Year's Day persuading frozen Midwesterners to move to California.

Now we're going to show them that all of us cosmetically enhanced, road-raging, stuck-up Hollywood types are really just rock-ribbed pigskin fans at heart?

Fight on, eight-clap, do what you will do on Saturday. But quietly.