This One Might Be a Little Too Real

For all his boardroom bravado, Donald Trump might seem like a big softy compared with the next king of reality television: Bob Knight.

Knight is scheduled to lord his status over 16 Texas Tech students competing for the chance to play on his team in an ESPN show called “Knight School.” Filming for the six one-hour episodes, to be shown in February, starts next month.

The winner -- assuming somebody survives the ordeal -- will have a chance to become a walk-on for the 2006-07 season.

“From a public relations standpoint, this couldn’t be any better for Texas Tech,” Knight told the Lubbock (Texas) Avalanche-Journal.

That is, until the first kid runs afoul of “the General.”

Trivia time: When was the last time UCLA had three consecutive nonwinning seasons in football?

Mother knows best: Nearly three years later, Chicago Cub Manager Dusty Baker can still hear his mom blaring in his ear about his decision to let son Darren serve as a batboy in the 2002 World Series between the Angels and San Francisco Giants.

Baker told Sports Illustrated that he was waiting to start a news conference about the tyke’s nearly getting run over by San Francisco’s David Bell near home plate when his mom called.

“She started lighting into me, like moms do, yelling, ‘I told you! I told you something bad would happen!’ ” Baker said. “I was like, ‘Mom, I’ve got to go and talk to the press now.’ She said, ‘Oh, no! You tell the press to wait. I ain’t through with you yet.’ ”

Signature move: Taking Bud Selig to task for supporting Rafael Palmeiro’s bid to reach 3,000 hits after Palmeiro had tested positive for steroids, Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that he was “still waiting for Mr. Magoo to be a commissioner and make a public statement condemning Palmeiro.

“While Palmeiro was appealing in secret arbitration hearings, [Selig] was participating in a historic sham,” Mariotti wrote. “Yes, Selig had to obey the legal process and let Palmeiro play. But did he have to approve and sign a full-page ad in USA Today congratulating the tainted hero for his milestone?”

What a bargain: Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald marveled at the way Shaquille O’Neal “settled” for a $100-million contract with the hometown Heat.

“You have to love where we are in sports when an athlete is being Gandhi-ish by accepting a mere $20 mil a season,” Le Batard wrote. “But, hey, in a climate where an Austin Croshere costs more than $50 million and a bespectacled sideline gypsy named Larry Brown goes for nearly $70 million, the universe’s most dominant big man is indeed a comparative bargain.”

Trivia answer: The 1962-64 Bruins, under Bill Barnes, finished a combined 10-20.

And finally: Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times, on the Build-A-Bear Workshop in which kids can make their own NFL teddy bears and dress them in the jerseys or sweatshirts of their favorite teams: “Word has it that the Chicago Bears’ replicas are so realistic that you can knock the stuffing out of them from September clear through December.”