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: “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel”

Where: HBO, tonight, 10

There are tears in the eyes of Rick Pitino throughout his interview with Frank Deford on this edition of HBO’s sports magazine show. Pitino, the new basketball coach at Louisville, talks about losing his brother-in-law and best friend in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Bill Minardi, 46, the brother of Pitino’s wife Joanne, was among the hundreds of Cantor Fitzgerald employees who never made it out of the north tower. Minardi and his wife Stephanie had just returned from a vacation with the Pitinos.

Asked how the tragedy has affected him, Pitino says: “I won’t take losing as hard. When I lose, I’ll go home and say, ‘Let’s get ready for tomorrow.’ It’s not going to be any sort of devastation for me. It was at times and I’m a shallow person thinking back on it because of that. But now I realize it’s not devastation at all. Devastation is what happened on Sept. 11.”

Another story on this “Real Sports” deals with taking sports too seriously, with deadly results. The story is about Lance Butterfield, who was an all-around high school athlete and honor student in Fort Worth. His father, Bill, became so obsessed with Lance’s athletic career that he quit his job in the family’s mattress business so he could attend all of Lance’s football games and practices, tape them and critique them. His obsession and abuse drove his son to take drastic measures.

There is a segment on former Dallas Cowboy receiver Michael Irvin and how he has found religion.

Another story is about about Geri Fuhr, a girls’ high school basketball coach in Michigan who sued because a man was chosen over her to coach the boys’ varsity. She made an interesting decision after winning the case.