TUCSON IN THROES OF FOOTBALL FRENZY.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

With Tucson in the grip of football fever, something like this was bound to happen.

A University of Arizona student, one Kimberly Ann Bissel, waiting in line with hundreds of fans Monday morning to buy tickets for tonight's game against UCLA, fainted in the heat and conked her head on a cactus.

I don't make 'em up. This desert drama was reported by the Arizona Daily Star newspaper alongside a photograph of the prostrate Kimberly and the unbowed cactus.

Anyway, for suffering the pain of a cactus needle in the ear, Kimberly got her tickets, thanks to some neighbors in line who brought them to her at the hospital. So now she can be one of 57,803 fans at Arizona Stadium for the game between the third-ranked Bruins and the 10th-ranked Wildcats, Arizona's first sellout in two years.

To be sure, it's a big game for the Bruins.

At stake are their national-championship hopes and their Rose Bowl hopes. It's their first Top 10 vs. Top 10 matchup since 1988.

To be just as sure, it's an even bigger game for the Wildcats.

At stake are their national-championship hopes (unlike UCLA, they've never won) and their Rose Bowl hopes (unlike UCLA, they've never gone). It would be their 10th straight victory, the longest winning streak in Arizona history.

All that, plus the wonderment created by quarterback Ortege Jenkins' head-over-heels vault to the winning touchdown with four seconds left in last Saturday's road game against 20th-ranked Washington, caused a ticket-buying frenzy that saw an Arizona-record 5,839 sold on Monday alone.

Five hundred customers were in line when the McKale Center ticket windows opened at 10 a.m.

It's also ``Family Weekend'' on campus, so the town is packed, all the hotel rooms and rental cars for miles around are spoken for, and ``it's pretty jacked up around here,'' an athletic department spokesman said.

On top of which, somebody in the sports information office had the idea of asking all the fans to wear red to the game, copying the Phoenix Coyotes' ``whiteouts'' and Arizona basketball's ``red-outs.''

If the Bruins expect this to be something like the trip to Houston last month, they're in for a shock.

``It's like the biggest game of the year, maybe in the history of the school,'' Jenkins said this week.

And so the biggest reason to worry for UCLA, which would win the game on paper, is that the big crowd and the atmosphere will inspire the Wildcats to play over their heads.

``The fans are right on top of you. They're loud behind their Wildcats,'' said UCLA receiver Brian Poli-Dixon, a Tucson native. ``The town will be hyped. It's a smaller town. It's a college town. The whole town backs the team.''

To understand, you have to know about Tucson, beyond the killer cactus. It's a true college town, its population of 350,000 making it one of the nation's biggest cities to have a university but no professional sports teams.

It's the kind of place where the head football coach writes a weekly column in the local newspaper and donates his fee to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Tucson.

It's the kind of place where the paper reports with unabashed pride that Sports Illustrated is staffing Saturday's game. Now, that's exciting, like the week the truck from Fort Knox went through Mayberry.

And it's the kind of place where the sports information director is only too happy to give an out-of-town reporter he hasn't met the home telephone number of the head football coach.

``Obviously, just from our conference perspective, it's a very important game,'' Arizona coach Dick Tomey said on the phone.

Arizona is 5-0 overall and 2-0 in the Pacific-10. (UCLA is 3-0 and 1-0.) After this, the Wildcats face one more top-25 opponent, 15th-ranked Oregon on Oct. 31, and that's at home.

If they win tonight, the hard part is over. So this is make-or-break.

``Obviously, the people are excited, but our players have done a great job of keeping their nose to the grindstone,'' Tomey said. ``It's exciting for us, but it's also sobering, because we know we're playing the best team we'll see all season.

``I think our crowd is great and will be great, but I think our players would be up for the game if they were playing in the Safeway parking lot.''

Of course, the school with the most at stake might be neither UCLA nor Arizona but Miami, which probably is rooting for the Wildcats.

If UCLA wins tonight, it will have its Top 10 scalp, a big step toward a national title, and little incentive to reschedule the game that was canceled because of Hurricane Georges. If UCLA loses tonight, it might agree to make up that game in Miami.

There, the fans are safe from cactus but should look out for falling coconuts.