BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

When Bob Goin was athletic director at Florida State, he took a call from a guy with a last request: He wanted a ticket to the football game against Florida. The man was ''scheduled to die,'' he told Goin. Aren't we all.

He didn't say when. But Goin was taking no chances. He set the guy up.

''I didn't want to be the one to deny a final wish,'' Goin said.

Impending death was the only con Goin accepted when people came calling for spare tickets to the Florida game. Couples wanted to get married at halftime. That didn't work. People claimed friendship to coaches. When that struck out, they claimed kinship. Nope. Sorry. ''It was an impossible ticket,'' Goin said Monday.

This comes up now as Goin's current employer, the University of Cincinnati, is groveling to get its football team into a bowl game. The thought occurs that no UC football fan is scheduled to die shortly after the Humanitarian Bowl on Dec. 29.

How long will Minter stay?

Also, the school is responding to rumors that coach Rick Minter is being considered for the Arkansas job. Let's see: Conference USA? Or the SEC? Big game against Alabama? Or East Carolina? You know people who call themselves Hogs take their football seriously. And here?

It's a treadmill at best, with no end in sight. Sisyphus had an easier time with the boulder.

Football has a conference to play in. It has three straight winning seasons. It has Nippert Stadium, the best place to watch a game in the city, if you don't count The Pit at Elder. It has a problem that may never go away. Not enough people care.

When you have to offer to play a home-and-home basketball series with Boise State (whoa, don't tell the recruits) if your football team can play in a bowl game there, not enough people care.

When you indicate, as Goin has, that you are willing to buy 15,000 tickets to the game, even when you know you couldn't give 15,000 tickets away if each came with a certificate for a free Lexus, not enough people care.

Last year, the Bearcats drew an average of 24,256 fans for a 6-5 team; this year, it was 20,135 for 7-4. Not enough people care. The boulder never shrinks.

UC has tied some of its basketball season-ticket packages to football. If you want hoops, you have to buy football, too. UC brought in Gerald O'Dell to athletic-direct, partly because O'Dell was seen as ''a football guy.''

Bob Goin is a football guy. You wonder how many football guys will sit in the director's chair before football becomes an item.

UC has done its best to promote football. So far, football is fairly unpromotable. Goin, being new, is giving it another try.

Goin craves pub for UC

He said he has never worked harder at anything than getting the Bearcats a bowl invitation. He doesn't care about making money. He'll play for expenses. He just wants the publicity.

He wants Dan Patrick on Sports- Center, breathlessly telling the world that Cincinnati is headed to the Humanitarian Bowl. He wants the radio people to talk about it, the newspapers to write about it.

He wants area high school players and their parents - ''the Cincinnati constituency,'' Goin calls them - to hear about it and read about it and figure that ''UC is not a bad investment for a kid.''

It sounds great. It might even work. Come to UC. Play in the Humanitarian Bowl.

But things are moving slowly. Minter's teams have been solid and respectable. His players aren't in trouble. But few of us care about watching Alabama-Birmingham or Tulsa. Minter doesn't incite passion. His offense is dull. This isn't Lexington or Tallahassee. He's competing with the NFL.

Goin calls a bowl bid ''one of the fundamentals'' to building the football program. Could be. Maybe the good folks in Boise should offer the Bearcats their at-large invitation. Talk about humanitarian.

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Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at (513) 768-8454.