Stage set for Ducks' game.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

WITHOUT QUESTION, the Ducks will have to play extremely hard to defeat Southern California in Thursday night's men's basketball showdown for the Pac-10 Conference title in the Sports Arena.

In recent days, Oregon lobbied extremely hard to get that game on television.

That persistence was rewarded late Monday afternoon, when Fox Sports Net and the Pac-10 agreed to allow the Oregon-USC game to be televised throughout the Pacific Northwest on Fox Sports Northwest (AT&T cable 23).

That this could be the most important Oregon basketball game since the Tall Firs won the national title in 1939 is the reason folks here wanted dearly to be able to see it, but Fox and the Pac-10 can't necessarily care about that.

What they ultimately recognized is that more will be decided about the league title in the Sports Arena than in the matchup that Fox Sports Net had previously chosen to televise nationally Thursday, Stanford at Arizona.

If Oregon wins, the Ducks close out Southern Cal and clinch at least a share of the Pac-10 title - the first ever for Oregon - and the No. 1 seed in the Pac-10 tournament. If the Trojans win, they virtually clinch a tie for the title, with only Oregon State to beat on Saturday.

It was unthinkable that this game wouldn't be televised for its intrinsic news value, and it has to be somewhat disconcerting to Oregon that it nearly had to move heaven and earth for that to happen.

Of course, on Feb. 15, when Fox Sports Net and the Pac-10 agreed on Stanford-Arizona, that was certainly the logical choice, if you look at it objectively and not provincially.

That's an attractive matchup of the teams that have won the past four Pac-10 titles, and McKale Center is guaranteed to provide a wild, exciting backdrop of enthusiastic fans.

As of Feb. 15, too, Oregon had just been swept in the Bay Area. Fox also had to wonder about the atmosphere in the Sports Arena; USC averages only 6,405 fans per game, just 41.3 percent of capacity in at the Sports Arena, though a sellout is expected Thursday.

At the time, too, Fox and the league had to figure that Stanford would hold serve at home; instead, the Cardinal got swept by the Los Angeles schools last weekend, and the league's best game Thursday became Oregon-USC.

"When we made the decision on the 15th, we didn't know USC-Oregon would have the ramifications that it did," said Duane Lindberg, the Pac-10's assistant commissioner for electronic communications.

With the Cardinal-Wildcats game set to be the national Fox Sports Net game, Oregon lobbied first to be able to televise the Oregon-SC game on its own Oregon Sports Network, and with its own announcers.

It seemed a fair request, because the game was already set to be televised in Los Angeles on the second Fox channel there, Fox Sports Net West 2, which will apparently provide the announcers Thursday night.

BUT THAT REQUEST was refused, and it wasn't until Monday afternoon that news judgement finally prevailed.

"I know that Tom Hansen (the commissioner of the Pac-10) communicated with the people at Fox in a very stern manner," Oregon Athletic Director Bill Moos said. "I'm sure that helped.

"Business is business, and I understand that, but this is a community in love with its basketball team right now, and it's not like we play for the Pac-10 Conference title every year, though we hope to get to that point. It would have been bad business not putting it on."

The Pac-10 schedule on Fox Sports Net is generally set by July, built around anticipated marquee games that will be appealing nationally while getting each school on a minimum amount of times over the years.

Which is why, a few weeks ago we got an Oregon State-Cal snorefest while the Ducks and Cardinal played an overtime classic on The Farm. Oregon also tried to get that game on the Oregon Sports Network, without success.

"You don't want to cannibalize yourself," Lindberg said.

The league's contract with Fox Sports Net goes through 2006, and the two parties are in deep; the Pac-10 men's tourney will be played in the Staples Center and televised by Fox Sports Net, which owns a chunk of the building.

The ability for a late-season wild-card pick only became part of the league's TV contract in recent years, and Lindberg said this was the first time that the league found itself on the horns of a dilemma. Monday's decision won't make everybody completely happy - the Oregon-game should be the national game - but Oregon was relieved simply to get it on TV locally, and the game will get national exposure through updates in the Stanford-UA telecast.

"We don't traditionally do this kind of thing, but we bit the bullet," Lindberg said, adding: "The bottom line is that both games are on, and they probably both deserve to be on."

In the case of potentially Oregon's most important game in more than 60 years, that would be an understatement.