PLATO couldn't make it, but Byron (Whizzer) White, Ken Dryden, Donna Lopiano, Yasutaka Matsudaira and Kwaku Ohene-Frempong did. And Bill Bradley stopped by the night before.

They were here for yesterday's inaugural induction ceremony of the International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame, a charming white building whose architecture might best be described as Grecian Colonial on the University of Rhode Island campus.

You won't find leather football helmets or cracked goaltender's masks here, but you will find tributes to 20 people who took studying as seriously as they took sport. As more of today's college athletes should.

''I never considered myself a scholar or an athlete,'' said Dryden, the Toronto Maple Leafs' president. ''I was just somebody who loved to play and loved to learn. I came to realize that the best kind of learning came with play, and the best kind of play came with learning.''