CUT 'N' RUN

This is not as wholly outrageous or funny as that other Sports Illustrated editor Dan Jenkins' Semi-Tough, but it's a nice post-season reminder of that all-American favorite game. Not Rosalie Start's -- the wife of a rapidly ascendant Baltimore stockbroker (who launched the franchised barbershops Cut 'n' Run) whose fall is a season of utter discontent -- Jerry's ""engulfed"" by pro football and their marriage is facing sudden death. Then there's the great player Geyser (Jerry's old buddy, Rosalie's raincheck from her youth) who is now recruited from the U.S. Army; and one Tyrone Dancer, a black militant, who raises a lot of havoc off the field. Deford's easy humor ranges over everything from buff-ant high fashion to liberation of one kind or another and the grid is green, the tone genial.