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: “Football Doesn’t Have to Be a Dirty Word: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding the Sport”

Price: $6.95; order from Advance Resource Publications, (626) 797-9721 or (800) 780-9032

We’d like to recommend a football book for women written by a former nun.

Unfortunately, we can’t.

Rosalie G. Robles’ book--really no more than a booklet--assumes a level of obliviousness that is difficult to believe, and is a flawed effort besides.

Take these snippets: “Just right off the bat let’s acknowledge that the game consists of two teams playing against one another! I’ll not take anything for granted here! . . . The team with the ball is called ‘the offense.’ The team without the ball is the ‘defense.’ . . . The player in the center behind the lineup is called the ‘quarterback.’ He calls the plays.”

There are other problems, such as diagrams of “standard” offensive and defensive formations that feature a defense with three down linemen and an offense with a halfback and a fullback in the T formation.

Not standard in this decade.

Then there are sentences that are simply misleading.

“If all goes like clockwork, the quarterback receives the ball from the center. He hands it off to the ‘receiver’ who takes the ball down the field toward the end zone.”

Jerry Rice would be surprised to learn he was supposed to be taking a handoff all these years.

Robles comes across as a delightful person whose enjoyment of football and the friendly gatherings it leads to are clear. Her attempts to explain the game fall short.

Just as with her accompanying recipe for salsa, you’d do better taking a look and figuring it out for yourself.