USC NEEDS HERO OUT OF THE BLUE.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Where's greed when we need it, now that USC and all of college football are crying out for a solution to this national-championship mess?

Where's America's can-do spirit when we need it?

Ah, hell, where's Bing Crosby when we need him?

In 1954, things were as crazy as they are today, the regular season ending with three teams unbeaten and making cases for the national title. Ohio State was ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press writers poll, UCLA No. 1 in the United Press International coaches poll, Oklahoma No. 3 in each poll. While Ohio State was going to the Rose Bowl, UCLA was barred from the Rose Bowl and Oklahoma from the Orange Bowl by the conferences' weird no-repeat-champions rules.

Enter Crosby, the crooner and actor - and golf-tournament namesake, racetrack patron and baseball-club owner - who proposed to bring together the idle Bruins and Sooners for an unofficial playoff game to clear up at least part of the confusion.

Though Crosby wanted to accentuate the positive by giving some of the proceeds to the U.S. Olympic effort, the NCAA blocked the whole plan and UCLA and Ohio State split the championship.

I'm afraid that would happen again if some latter-day Der Bingle tried to set up a showdown to settle the national debate that rages in 2003 even though the Bowl Championship Series was supposed to prevent split-title scenarios such as this.

But wouldn't you love to see somebody pull an end run around NCAA bureaucracy and try?

Let's say USC beats Michigan in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 and holds onto its No. 1 ranking in the AP poll. Either Oklahoma or LSU wins the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4 and takes the BCS national-title trophy. Looks like a couple of pretty good semifinal games to me.

So suppose that on Jan. 5, a gazillionaire sports promoter calls up USC and the Sugar Bowl winner and says, ``How much would I have to pay you to play one more game?'' Then the maverick calls up his local stadium and says, ``How much would it cost to rent the field for a night?'' Then he calls up a television network and says, ``How much for three hours of air?''

One more call, to the NCAA: ``How much would I have to slip you to sanction my little football game, or to look the other way?''

Of course, the NCAA can't be bought.

Uh, right.

Maybe a small charitable contribution, say $10 million to buy better flak jackets for the troops in Iraq, would make the deal easier to sell.

What would it take for a Ted Turner, a Paul Allen or a Rupert Murdoch to put on a one-time-only, seat-of-the-pants, for-all-the-marbles game between the Sugar Bowl and Rose Bowl winners? Twenty million dollars? Fifty million? A hundred million?

``I guess the TV time is the cheapest thing, if you just kind of bought the air time,'' said Casey Wasserman, owner of arena football's Avengers, penciling it out in his head. ``National network air time is roughly 300 grand an hour. Three hours is a million bucks. Let's say rent at a stadium is 150 grand, a couple hundred grand at most. Then it's what you pay the teams. The BCS championship game pays 17 million.

``So let's stay it's (a total of) $20 million,'' Wasserman said of the basic costs. ``Then you've got to sell advertising. You could call it the Coca-Cola Championship Game. Then you'd start to recoup.''

The promoter might turn a quick profit and own the championship-game franchise for life.

The hard part isn't throwing together the game, as the NFL proved when it moved a Monday-night game on 24 hours' notice from fire-ravaged San Diego to Tempe, Ariz.

The hard part is getting past the powers that be.

``I don't think the NCAA would do it because it would just open a can of worms they clearly don't want to open,'' Wasserman said. ``This is one of the few cases where the solution is not that difficult to figure out. The problem is that the NCAA has a monopoly. You can't play college football outside the NCAA.''

Rule 17.11.4 of the organization's bylaws says Division I-AA football teams can't play games after ``the second Saturday or Sunday in December'' except for bowls and official championships, which can't be held after Jan. 4. The rule was enacted in 1989 to prevent additional games and practices from interfering with ``the academic mission of the university,'' NCAA spokeswoman Kay Hawes said. This was after regular-season schedules had blown up from nine games to 12 and the bowl calendar from four games to 28.

Rules can be changed, Hawes said, but not in a month.

``I'm afraid money isn't going to help you in this case,'' she said.

Since when?

It was ABC's agreement to pay the NCAA $525 million for seven years of TV rights to the Sugar, Rose, Orange and Fiesta bowls that created the BCS, which uses those major bowls for annual showdowns between the teams rated No. 1 and 2 by a formula combining human polls and computer rankings.

``We got into this whole BCS mess because of money,'' said David Carter, a Redondo Beach sports-business expert who teaches at USC. ``Big money trumped tradition.''

Why can't the same spirit get us out of this mess?

Clearly the solution isn't going to come from the NCAA.

What this country needs is a billionaire who wants to be a hero.

And can't afford Anna Nicole Smith.