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What: Instructional Football Videos

Quarterback Brett Favre, wide receiver Jerry Rice, running back Rodney Hampton, tight end Brent Jones and kicker Jeff Jaeger sound like the making of a pretty good fantasy football league team.

But what they really are is part of a 12-set series of “All Pro Sports” instructional football videos produced by Los Angeles-based Trident Entertainment and distributed by Minneapolis-based Quality Video.

Don Shula, the NFL’s winningest coach, retired defensive back Ronnie Lott, defensive end Reggie White, offensive lineman Jim Lachey, cornerback Eric Allen, linebacker Jack Del Rio and punter Jeff Gossett also have tapes in the set.

The 40-minute tapes, which retail for $14.95 each, include more than instruction. There are also mini-bios and some decent production value for this kind of thing. Roy Firestone is the narrator, but don’t expect any of the kind of probing interviews Firestone does for ESPN. He didn’t do the interviews, only the narration.

It’s not all fluff, but Favre’s addiction to alcohol and pain-killers, for instance, is not discussed.

But if it’s some basic fundamental instruction you’re after, the tapes aren’t bad. In his tape, Favre goes through his conditioning as well as basic things, such as keeping your head up when you’re calling signals and where and how to place your hands on the center’s crotch.

We need to know these things.

Greg Johnson, president of Quality Video, claims these videos mark the first time instruction has been mixed with entertainment. “Even if you don’t play football, you’ll enjoy hearing the inside stories,” he said.

In Rice’s tape, he talks about how his childhood job of laying bricks with his father helped his football career. With his brother tossing bricks at him, it was either catch them or get hit in the head. Rice also says, “We worked from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., sometimes in 100-degree heat. It taught me what hard work was.”

The tapes were done last summer, and maybe the participants had more honorable objectives than just making money. “I think professional athletes should be role models,” Lott says. “We need to take the initiative to step up and help young people. That’s one of the reasons Jerry and I made these videos.”