NOTEBOOK

By CHARLOTTE FALTERMAYER, DAWNICA JACKSON, TYLER MARONEY, JODIE MORSE, JEFFERY C. RUBIN AND ALAIN L. SANDERS

WINNERS & LOSERS

THE SPORTIN' LIFE (100% OLYMPICS-FREE)

[WINNERS]

$HAQUILLE O'NEAL Rapper, movie star and occasional hoopster goes West: a $123M deal with the Lakers

BRETT FAVRE 1995's MVP returns to the Packers clean and sober, with "Super Bowl or bust" fever

MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER Fans are getting a kick out of its inaugural season, packing stadiums in record numbers

[& LOSERS]

MICHAEL IRVIN Fallen Cowboy evades jail time on drug charge, but may face N.F.L. suspension

MARGE SCHOTT Already barred from day-to-day operations, meddling Reds owner now has to buy own tix

SLEAZY AGENTS The NCAA attacks quick-buck pro contracts by proposing loans and jobs for student athletes

AND THE GOLD MEDAL FOR RECYCLING GOES TO...

The 2 million Olympics visitors who converged on Atlanta last week are expected to generate millions of pounds--possibly as much as 90 million pounds--of garbage. To help keep Atlanta tidy and ecologically correct, the latest Use Less Stuff newsletter from the Partners for Environmental Progress--a Michigan-based coalition of business, consumer and government groups--offers a few tourist tips:

--Take short, cool showers. (This does not apply to the athletes, however.)

--Ask that your hotel sheets and towels be changed only every other day.

--Avoid room service, as eating in your room dirties more linens, uses extra energy to keep meals warm and leads to excess food waste.

--Filch only a reasonable number of salt, pepper, sugar, catsup and mayo packets. (No number is specified.)

--Use faster film-like ASA 400-when shooting inside to extend battery life.

--Wash your car when you get home.

BOTTOMS UP

No matter who wins come November, thirsty voters can toast the Chief with these presidential brews. Creator David Kaufman is donating 25[cents] a case to reduce the national debt. Cheers.

THE KING GOES TO COLLEGE

Elvis Presley never made it to university, but now the ivory tower is coming to him. For a growing body of Ph.D.s, Elvis is more than a pop icon--he's a treasure trove of subjects for scholarly research. Beginning Aug. 3, two dozen academics will present papers at the latest international conference on the King, at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. Vernon Chadwick, the conference director, who has made connections between Elvis' Hawaiian movies and Herman Melville's Polynesian novels, declares, "Within Elvis there is a multiplicity of topics of study." Among the conference's papers:

ELVIS, FAULKNER AND FEMININE SPIRITUALITY Joel Williamson, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, explores the links between two of the South's greatest icons, Elvis and novelist William Faulkner. "They were born within 27 miles of each other," he notes, "and both were obsessed with race and sex, and both were tremendously conscious of a class hierarchy."

ELVIS: THE TWINLESS TWIN'S SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL MEANING Peter Whitmer, a clinical psychologist and author of the newly published The Inner Elvis (Hyperion; $22.95), argues that Elvis' stillborn twin brother Jesse played a critical and enduring role in the King's life. "Elvis' psychic raison d'etre as a twinless twin was to put himself back together again," says Whitmer. "That was really the power of his creativity--as well as the momentum behind his self-destructive downward spiral."

OFF THE WALL, FROM THE HEART: VOTIVE GRAFFITI AT GRACELAND On the 6-ft.-tall, 180-yd.-long limestone wall surrounding Graceland, visitors scrawl thousands of messages, usually in Magic Marker. Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland, sketches parallels between two categories of pilgrims: visitors to Graceland and early Christian acolytes. "What was true of early sacred travel is true of Graceland today," he says. "People leave votive offerings behind and take away relics."

The six-day conference is open to the public (cost: $70 per day or $350 for the entire program). To register, call 601-232-7282 or visit the Internet address: http://www.cssc.olemiss.edu/ conferences/elvis 96/elvis.html.

LOCAL HEROES

FRED WHITFIELD, 37; GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA; attorney

Wanting to make use of his experience representing N.B.A. players for superagent David Falk, Whitfield, left, in 1984 started Achievements Unlimited, a basketball camp for boys and girls that stresses book learning as well as bounce passes. N.B.A. greats such as Michael Jordan and Juwan Howard make special appearances. Says Whitfield: "This is an opportunity to learn basketball skills as well as the importance of staying in school and drug-free."

MILDRED LEET, 73, AND GLEN LEET, 88; NEW YORK CITY; international-development consultants

At an age when most people retire, these former U.N. officials have spent their golden years running Trickle Up, a program they founded to launch businesses in underdeveloped areas. In the past 17 years, they have jump-started 52,000 enterprises in 113 countries by funneling grants directly to impoverished families. Says Mildred: "There is a way to end poverty by helping people help themselves up the economic ladder."

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

JOHN B. ANDERSON, 74; FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.; former independent presidential candidate

In a quixotic bid for the presidency in 1980, the earnest former Republican Congressman from Illinois with a distinctive helmet of white hair emerged from political obscurity to attack Reagan's economic proposals and Carter's foreign policy and to attract an army of idealistic supporters. With a late start and without a billionaire's bank account, Anderson was still able to garner nearly 7% of the vote, provoking pols and pundits to ponder anew the viability of independent and third-party candidacies. Today Anderson, a visiting professor of law at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, travels the lecture circuit as president of the World Federalist Association, an organization that promotes world peace. "We are now light years ahead of where we were in people's thinking about how the two-party system has failed them," Anderson says. "The race between Perot and Lamm only increases the legitimacy of the third party."

15 YEARS AGO IN TIME

Star-Crossed Lovers

The late Malcolm Muggeridge, British literary curmudgeon, on the royal marriage: "Only fortunetellers, Marxists and Jehovah's Witnesses will venture to prognosticate whether Prince Charles and Lady Diana will actually one day mount the throne as King and Queen of England. In the course of 50 years of knockabout journalism, I have seen too many upheavals of one sort and another to feel any certainty about anything or anyone... Popularity, however seemingly strong and widespread, can evaporate in an afternoon, and institutions that have lasted for centuries disappear overnight. So I can but conclude by simply saying, 'God bless the Prince and Princess of Wales.'" --Aug. 3, 1981