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What: “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel”

Where: HBO, tonight, 10

The lead story is on “Jefferson Street” Joe Gilliam, who, with the Pittsburgh Steelers, in 1974 became the first African American to begin an NFL season as the starting quarterback. The last time television featured Gilliam was four years ago on an NBC Super Bowl pregame show. It showed a beaten man, homeless, unable to beat a drug habit. Gilliam hit rock bottom on national TV.

The HBO feature, reported by James Brown, is more upbeat. Gilliam seems to have found sobriety and stability with a new wife in his hometown of Nashville, Tenn. He got his nickname from a street in the black section there. He and Barbara, a schoolteacher, have been married for two years. Gilliam is the homemaker and Barbara, who has two sons, the breadwinner. Brown asks the key question of Gilliam: Why does he think he can remain sober this time while past efforts have failed. “Because this is the first time I’ve done it for me, for Joey,” Gilliam says.

Terry Bradshaw, whom Gilliam beat out for the starting job in 1974, says he went to Steeler Coach Chuck Noll and asked to be traded. But by midseason Bradshaw was again the starter. “He gave me my job back, I didn’t earn it,” Bradshaw says. “He could have been the one winning those Super Bowls.”

Bradshaw tells Brown he saw Gilliam snorting cocaine before a game against the Rams at the Coliseum in 1974 by looking over his stall into Gilliam’s adjacent stall in the locker room. Gilliam said he first snorted cocaine to ease the pain after being beat up by the Oakland Raiders in the third game of 1974. Why did he do it? “I was a fool,” Gilliam says. He also says, “If I wasn’t sleeping, I was doing drugs.”

Two other stories on this edition of “Real Sports” are about football: one on players who have pawned their Super Bowl rings, featuring former Oakland Raider defensive back Skip Thomas; another on running backs Terrell Davis of Denver Broncos and Jamal Anderson of Atlanta, who, a week apart, suffered season-ending knee injuries early this season, both tearing an anterior cruciate ligament. A warning here: Davis’ surgery is shown in graphic detail. The fourth story is a profile of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Kevin Garnett, who went from high school to the NBA.