A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: CNN’s “Pinnacle”

Profile of Nike CEO Phil Knight.

It was probably difficult for CNN to get Phil Knight to sit still for this interview, given his reclusive nature and, as CNN put it, Knight’s “goal . . . to take over the world.”

But “Pinnacle” is the place that turns cutthroat corporate deal brokers into warm and fuzzy philanthropists, so Knight had nothing to lose on the show, which aired Saturday.

“I hate all my competitors,” Knight tells CNN financial news reporter Beverly Schuch. “I don’t want to like them. Essentially, they take market share away from us, we have to let employees go and our ambitions and our dreams are cut back. So I don’t want to like them.”

Let employees go? When “Pinnacle” reports that Nike made $6.5 billion in 1996 and estimates Knight’s personal wealth between $3-$4 billion?

It has happened. Nike fired more than 2,000 workers in the mid-1980s when it closed U.S. plants and subcontracted work to cheaper factories overseas, which earned Knight the ranking of Corporate Crook No. 3 in Michael Moore’s anti-big business book, “Downsize This!”

Knight responds to the charge as if he were flicking a fly from his eyebrow.

Knight: “I met ‘the great’ Michael Moore . . . and told him, ‘Yeah, I have your book, my wife gave it to me for our [28th] anniversary.’ And he says [Knight chuckles], ‘My goodness, how long have you been married?’ ”

Softball questions abound, but Knight artfully dodged anything delivered too close to the belt.

Those reports of youth sweatshops in Asia cranking out Nike product for wages amounting to mere pennies an hour?

“Yes, we take a lot of criticism about that,” Knight allows. “And I guess it makes a good sound bite to contrast Michael Jordan’s pay or my net worth with an Indonesian worker that’s making $5 a day. And maybe that sells media time.

“But essentially, we’re very proud of our factories overseas and we think they’re not only the best shoe factories in the world, but we think--as far as any kind of factories in the countries we operate in--that they will meet any kind of standard. We think we win that battle.”