SPORTS movies used to be simple in the old meat-and-potato days, with Gary Cooper saying "yup" and "nope" as Lou Gehrig, Elizabeth Taylor jumping up and down at the finish line in "National Velvet" and that marvelous character actor - I wonder what he's portraying lately - asking Pat O'Brien to "Win one for the Gipper."

Now we have basketball movies, hockey movies, running movies, tennis movies, everybody learning the true meaning of life from sports. Maybe it was a bad dream, or maybe it really happened, but I vaguely recall Pele winning World War II with an acrobatic bicycle kick in a war-camp soccer game.

The latest sport to be portrayed on the screen is rowing, in a movie - new to us, as the thumbnail sketches say - called "Oxford Blues," viewed on television the other night. In this one, the hero is a cheeky American, if one may be redundant, who learns loyalty for the first time as a member of an Oxford rowing club while also experiencing crusty British high society, if one may again be redundant.

The movie has so many touches of "Chariots of Fire" that one expects Ben Cross to come racing across the bridge during one of the rowing races, but it also has the contemporary look and sound of an MTV video - trim young bodies wearing abbreviated costumes, accompanied by a pulsing rock beat.

Imagine Monty Stratton trying to make a comeback as a pitcher after shooting himself in the foot, accompanied by an adoring wife wearing Calvin Klein jogging shorts and T-shirt, with Bruce Springsteen booming from the speakers. Because rowing is one of the few coeducational sports, "Oxford Blues" has a healthy young female coxswain training along with the men. And as our family MTV authority noticed, when the Yank is summoned to the headmaster's office to be dismissed from Oxford, he defiantly dresses in a leather jacket, jeans and gaudy shirt last seen on Simon LeBon of Duran Duran.

It is clear that the movies will continue to need new sports plots to fill this mass-audience market, blending sports, sex and music. The following are a few suggestions for new-wave sports movies:

* "Beverly Hills Cricket." Eddie Murphy as a Jamaican police officer transferred to Beverly Hills as part of a good-will exchange. He teaches the California officers, portrayed by the Los Angeles Lakers, how to play cricket, with Bob Marley's "Trenchtown Rock" playing in the background. On the job, he dresses like a Rastafarian to infiltrate a biker gang from the Topanga Canyon that has been tearing up the parking lot at Spago's. The cricket squad, sponsored by a wealthy rock singer, played by Tina Turner, is invited to a police tournament in London, but the team cannot compete unless Murphy conforms to a dress code. The movie turns on whether he will cut his dreadlocks.

* "Lost in Love." Kris Kristofferson, Ricky Skaggs, Johnny Cash and Charlie Pride play coal miners who bet their savings on their buddy, Willie Nelson, in the Harlan County Horseshoe Championships. But Willie falls in love with a rival, Emmy Lou Harris, from another mine. In a twist right out of O. Henry, they both try to tank the match to each other, while harmonizing on Willie's title song.

* "Purple Spike." A shy young man from Philadelphia, played by Wilt Chamberlain, visiting his aunt in Santa Monica, is too timid to enter into the surfside games. But one of those vibrant California beach girls, as played by Nastassja Kinski, urges him to meet some of her friends, as played by Sting, Prince, Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger and Gary Carter, making his film debut. Nastassja decides the shy young man from the City of Brotherly Love needs a hobby, so she gets him interested in volleyball. In a scene right out of "High Noon," they arrange a grudge match with the team from Redondo Beach, led by Jim Brown.

* "North of the Border." Too many movie spoofs have focused on beer and hockey as the staples of Canadian life, but this movie portrays another side: lawn bowling in Victoria, British Columbia, with an all-Canadian cast. Donald Sutherland plays an unscrupulous lawn-bowling entrepreneur who wants to lure Canadian talent to a new league he is building in California. But Len Cariou plays a Canadian industrialist who assembles a home-grown coed team that includes Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, the McGarrigle Sisters, Dan Aykroyd, Colleen Dewhurst and Anne Murray. In a sub-plot, Joni Mitchell plays a bowler who falls in love with an impoverished lawn-bowling reporter, played by Wayne Gretzky.

* "The Magnificent Seven." In another remake of the old Samurai warrior theme, seven first basemen seek other employment during a lengthy baseball strike, and find adventure playing in a Florida jai-alai fronton. Keith Hernandez, Don Mattingly, Steve Garvey, Eddie Murray, Rod Carew, Pete Rose and Chuck Connors all vie for the affections of a schoolteacher from Forest Hills, played by Madonna. She says she will fall in love with whichever player helps her win the perfecta.

* "From Here to Third Place." This is a new version of the James Jones classic book, with Reggie Jackson playing Robert E. Lee Prewitt, a temperamental slugger who refuses to bunt with the tying run on third base. Ron Guidry plays the earnest Sergeant Warden who just wants to do his job and retain his secluded locker in the corner of the barracks. Billy Martin plays Maggio, a tormented, misunderstood manager, who is often tossed into the brig on unfair charges. The fourth main male character, just like in the movie, is Sgt. Fatso Judson, who terrorizes his unit with threats and punishments until they all wish he would just go away. Any suggestions on a suitable actor to play this part?.