Having seen such movies as "The Shining" and "Ski Patrol II," I was fairly certain I recognized what was on the ground as my plane landed in Portland, Ore., Saturday afternoon.

Snow - and it was everywhere.

The woman at the rental car agency laughed when I told her I was driving from Portland to Eugene - 110 miles away - and back that night for the Arizona-Oregon men's basketball game.

"People in Oregon don't know the first thing about driving in snow," she warned, Oregon being more famous for its rain, "and since you're from... Arizona," she looked up at me disdainfully as I handed her my driver's license, "you know even less."

Tell me about it. With the freak winter storm hitting the city the day before, driving was, to borrow a phrase from golf, like putting from the roof of your car and getting the ball to stop on the hood. After spending a half hour "driving" (and I use that term loosely) through what can best be described as a milky soup, I decided not to risk the drive and headed for the nearest Best Western.

Of course, had my editor been Phil Martelli, the head coach of St. Joseph's who pitched a fit when the UA decided not to travel to Philadelphia to play them a few weeks back because of the Blizzard of '96, I probably would have been fired.

So I was not in Eugene for Arizona's 70-65 win over the Ducks, and neither was UA center Joseph Blair. Blair is not permitted to travel, much less compete, while he waits for a ruling from the university general petitions committee. The committee is to de cide whether Blair can get a failing grade changed to an incomplete, which would give the senior the 2.0 grade point average necessary to be eligible to compete under Arizona Board of Regents standards.

It has been nearly three weeks since Blair was declared ineligible, and while the UA is 4-0 over that period, it is time the committee gave Blair a decision, one way or the other.

The committee meets every three to four months to decide cases like these, but for cases such as Blair's, where a scholarship, job or eligibility is contingent on a speedy decision, there should be a faster hearing process.

Whether it's Blair, a resident assistant or the editor of the Wildcat, all of whom need a certain GPA to do what they do, and a quick result to have any chance of possibly doing it, no one is served by a process that could take up to four months for a dec ision - not the individual and certainly not their respective organizations, who have to wait in limbo about what structural changes they may have to make.

Brett Hansen, an information specialist with the UA's sports information office and the media contact for the men's basketball team, said yesterday he had been given no further information about Blair's status, or about where the matter stood with the com mittee, i.e., whether the committee had even heard Blair's case. On the several occasions I contacted the registrar's office, no one there could tell me what faculty or administrative members were on the committee, how many of them the committee comprised, or even whether the committee was currently sitting or not.

At the very least, perhaps some of the mystery surrounding the general petitions committee could be removed with some basic information on how the committee is staffed and when it meets. But even without that, the committee's priority should be clear - de cide the matter now and let Blair and the basketball team move on, in separate ways if necessary.

Patrick Klein is the sports editor for the Arizona Daily Wildcat.