TOUCHING OTHER BASES

* Tennis -- Martina Navratilova crushed Tracy, Austin 6-2, 6-1 to win the $75 ,000 first prize in the $250,000 Colgate Women's Championships at Landover, Maryland, and establish a solid claim to the No. 1 ranking for the past year. Navratilova had won her second straight Wimbledon championship last July but Austin had won the US Open in September to leave the question of the top ranking undecided.

College football -- Alabama crushed Arkansas 24-9 in the Sugar Bowl to close out the season as the nation's only major college unbeaten, untied team, and was rewarded with the No. 1 ranking in both United Press International's poll of coaches and The Associated Press poll of sports writers and broadcasters. Ohio State, which also had an 11-0 regular season record and had entered the bowl games on top in the AP poll, lost its chance for a share of the national championship when Southern Cal stormed from behind for a dramatic 17-16 Rose Bowl victory. Trailing 16-10 late in the fourth period, the Trojans drove 83 yards for the decisive score as Heisman Trophy winner Charles White gained 71 of his record 247 yards and dived over from the one for the TD. The victory left USC 11-0-1 and lifed the Trojans into second place in both polls. In the other major games, Houston stormed from behind with a 60-yard drive to beat Nebraska 17-14 in the Cotton Bowl on Terry Elston's six-yard TD pass to Eric Herring with 12 seconds left, and Oklahoma routed previously unbeaten Florida State in the Orange Bowl, 24-7, as Billy Sims ran for 164 yards.

Track -- both the men's and women's 60-meter indoor world sprint record fell during the Muhammad Ali Invitational meet in Long Beach, Calif., where Houston McTear lowered the men's mark to 6.53 seconds while Evelyn Ashford clipped .08 seconds off the female record with a 7.04 clocking. In a San Francisco meet, Norway's Grete Waitz set a record pace in the women's indoor 3,000, but a mistaken lap count probably will deny her the record.

Miscellaneous -- In a meet billed as a preview of the Moscow Olympics, the American women, led by Kim Linehan and Tracy Caulkins, won 10 of 14 events in an international women's swimming meet held in Austin, Texas.