They gather in a windowless room, up the staircase at Titan Gym.    You don't really want to know what happens there. Human pit bulls thrust themselves against each other, cracking bones, stretching ligaments, all in a quest for leverage.    "It's a tough, brutal sport," said the coach, Dan Hicks.    He does not explain the paradox of so many college kids who want to try it.    Cal State Fullerton's wrestling team won its first four matches and then lost its next five, as it heads for the Oregon Duals today. But the remarkable part of the previous sentence is that Cal State Fullerton still has a wrestling team.    The former coach, Ardeshir Asgari, quit last year. The athletic director, Brian Quinn, came last Jan. 14. Almost immediately, Quinn was confronted with the decision to drop wrestling, traditionally a low-revenue sport with scattered pockets of national interest, an all-male sport in the confrontational world of Title IX.    "I had a meeting with the team, and I told them I didn't know what was going to happen," Quinn said. "But the key thing I remember is the look in their eyes. Especially Chris Carlino and Rowdy Lundegreen. I don't like to take away opportunity."    "He's a builder," Hicks said. "That's what impressed me."    Hicks was so impressed he left his assistant's job at Oregon State to come coach a team that was no lock to remain one. Then the California budget shortfall landed hard on CSF, along with the report that women comprise 61 percent of the CSF student body, meaning the goal of gender equity keeps fading. Had Quinn known those facts, he might not have preserved wrestling. But, now that it's here, it has a chance.    "I know it from recruiting," Hicks said. "At Oregon State we came down here all the time to recruit. There's a real tight wrestling community in Southern California. We're the only college program here (south of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal State Bakersfield). And California kids always do well in the junior nationals. I've heard a lot of coaches say their kids want to come here.    "We've got three scholarships that we split up. We can have 9.9, under the NCAA guidelines, and maybe someday we will."    Wrestling is the most prominent casualty of Title IX, the law that requires colleges to provide equal playing opportunities for women. Twenty-three years ago, there were 152 Division I schools wrestling. Today there are 86.    Wrestling is not expensive, but it is labor-intensive. There are 10 weight classes. "I need four guys in each weight class just to have workout partners," Hicks said. A 184-pounder isn't going to get much out of a session with a 145-pounder, and you can't just switch around the lineup when the injuries hit.    It bothers Hicks to tell volunteers, walk-ons who want to suffer for nothing, that he has no room. Especially when women's teams have trouble filling out their rosters.    "It's been proven that, generally speaking, the women aren't as likely to come out for a sport if they have to sit on the bench," Hicks said. More women administrators agree. A series of Title IX panels might ease the "proportionality" issue, as long as the actual scholarships are made equal.    Lundegreen, a transfer from Oklahoma, knocked off top-seeded Scott Justus of Virginia Tech in the first round of the NCAAs last year. "You could hear people going 'Whooo' in the arena when I took him down," Lundegreen said. "Only some of the wrestlers knew who I was." But then Lundegreen got hurt. Doctors have told him that the shoulder has five working parts to it, and Rowdy has damaged all five.    Pain is a family friend. Lundegreen's dad and granddad were rodeo cowboys, as is his brother Rusty, at Eastern New Mexico.    Hicks, the son of a wrestling coach, was voted Wrestler of the '70s while at Oregon State. Back then it was tougher because of drastic weight reduction methods. "I remember losing 13 pounds in two days," Hicks said. "Trying to get ready for a match on honey and an apple. They don't make you do that anymore. They weigh you when you're hydrated. Now we've got guys lifting weights and wrestling at the weight they should be at. It's a lot better."    It is not a lot easier.    "I remember tearing cartilage in my knee at midseason and going ahead and wrestling through the season," Hicks said with a shrug. "You just find a different way to do it. These kids are running stadium steps while carrying a teammate. There's not much of a way around it. You compete through the pain."    Cal State Fullerton, despite its vanilla appearance, is an uncanny magnet for special athletes and coaches. Nobody passes through Cal State Fullerton - it's a destination, often the final one. Maybe that's why Brian Quinn couldn't turn out the lights in the wrestling room. As Hicks said, you find a different way to do it. Funny, he's been here just a few months and he knows the motto.