WANTED: COLUMN SPONSOR.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

The announcement Tuesday in New York that the Heisman Trophy is taking on American Suzuki as its first-ever corporate sponsor raises a few questions.

1. If it has to be an automotive sponsor, wouldn't the Ford Bronco be more appropriate?

2. What next - the Nobel Peace Prize, presented by Pizza Hut?

3. How can I get a sponsor?

Sports have reached a point where a commercial logo on your stadium, your jersey or your good name is no longer considered a sign of irreverence, desperation or greed.

These days you can hardly be considered major league unless your golf tournament is the John Deere Classic, your ballpark is the Network Associates Coliseum and your bullpen ace takes home the Rolaids Relief Pitcher of the Year Award.

And let's face it, there's good money in selling out to a corporation.

Pasadena raked in seven figures last football season by renaming its New Year's Day game ``the Rose Bowl, presented by AT&T.'' While that didn't exactly conjure images of tailgate parties, brass bands and pompons, it did strike the traditionalists as more dignified than the Federal Express Orange Bowl, the Micron/PC Bowl and the Poulan Weed-Eater Bowl.

In this week's development, New York's Downtown Athletic Club, bankrupt earlier this year, has worked a $1.5 million deal allowing Suzuki to call itself the chief sponsor of the award that has ranked as college football's greatest individual honor since 1935.

It won't be known as ``the Suzuki Heisman Trophy.'' Or even ``the Heisman Trophy, presented by Suzuki.'' In fact, it's unclear exactly what Suzuki gets for its money, other than the right to change the subject when anybody mentions O.J. Simpson.

If we're bombarded with Suzuki commercials every Saturday afternoon for the next four months, that might have more to do with another contract the company signed this week, a $35 million marketing partnership with Time Warner to promote the Heisman in TV and magazine ads.

Part of that deal calls for Suzuki to sponsor fan balloting that will result in the public jointly casting a single Heisman vote - to be counted along with the 992 votes from sports journalists, coaches and former winners.

A Downtown Athletic Club official promised this is not a step toward reducing the Heisman race to a popularity contest. ``We're not going to do anything to compromise the integrity of the award,'' club president Bill Dockery told the Associated Press.

No matter. Curmudgeons will say the Heisman is already tarnished by the very thought of a sponsor.

Not me. My main worry is how to get in on the action.

This column aims to become an institution in the world of sports, and as mentioned earlier, nowadays it's hard to achieve that stature without a sponsor's name to confer importance.

Therefore, applications are being accepted for title sponsorship (something like ``the Crayola Kevin Modesti Column'') or presenting sponsorship (possibly ``the Kevin Modesti column, presented by Helix Erasers''). It won't cost a million dollars, either.

The point is, if I ran a sports franchise (or awards show, tournament, racetrack, etc.), I'd have a hard time saying no to a boatload of money if all I had to give up was the sanctity of my name. Dodger Stadium? Fox Field? Melrose Place? Why would you care?

People shake their heads at sports' many corporate tie-ins - Monistat sponsoring ABC-TV's Women's World Cup scorebox, four PGA tournaments called ``the Buick,'' an L.A. horse track changing its marquee event to the Sempra Energy Hollywood Gold Cup - and put it down to some recent surge in crass American commercialism.

In fact it's neither a recent development nor a particularly American one.

Here's a photo of Fenway Park's Green Monster covered with a razor-blades ad during the 1946 World Series. The same ad is visible behind Lou Gehrig during his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium in 1939. ``Today I consider myself the smoothest-faced man on the face of the earth''?

Here's a cigarette ad above the center-field wall at the Polo Grounds, out where Willie Mays hauled in Vic Wertz's drive in 1954.

The blank walls of ballparks in the '60s, '70s and '80s was an aberration, not tradition. If you ask me, the ads painted on Dodger Stadium since Fox bought the baseball team actually dress up what had been a plain interior.

Meanwhile, on the international scene, the most popular sports franchise of all is recognized by the large Sharp Electronics logo across its jerseys - not by the tiny Manchester United crest in the corner. Soccer teams look as if they represent corporations, not towns.

Japanese baseball teams do represent corporations, not towns. If you don't think so, try to find Yomiuri (as in ``Yomiuri Giants'') on a map.

Anyway, it's easy to decry the Heisman's fall from grace, providing you think there was something sacred about it to begin with. It would be harder to complain if Suzuki were waving $1.5 million in your face.