Yes, fat jokes are a staple on "The Best Damn Sports Show, Period" -- as are jokes about the hotness of Anna Kournikova, the fiduciary nature of Tiger Woods' girlfriend's attraction to him, white men who can't jump and so-bad-they're-inoffensive jokes about the Washington Redskins (scalpers, boy were their faces red, etc.).

But there are tender moments. Guerrero says things like, "There are a lot of misconceptions about [San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry] Bonds that people are going to want to hear about. He's awesome!" Sometimes, the boys sit around and talk about the things that matter to them -- like when Lyons weighs in on Mets' shortstop Rey Ordóñez's recent errors and relates his own psychological battles with the ball. Then former Dallas Cowboys star and scandal-magnet Michael Irvin declares, "There's nothing more fragile than an athlete's psyche!"

Also fun, in a just-visiting sort of way, is watching the boys fawn over 6-foot-9, 300-pound Minnesota Vikings draft pick Bryant McKinnie. They admire his small glacier of a diamond stud earring, stroke his braids and scold each other for not getting to the subject of football sooner -- before impetuously asking whether McKinnie has his underwear tailor-made.

Even if Fox intended to present this show as the real man's alternative to ESPN's effete "witty" repartee, it comes across as achingly earnest. When someone asks the question, "In a four-corner cage match between the Rock, Jet Li, Ray Lewis and the Portland Trailblazers -- who would win?" it takes me right back to when I was 8, and my 6-year-old brother would pelt me with similar queries. (Of course, back then, he was thinking more along the lines of Evel Knievel, the Six Million Dollar Man, Muhammad Ali and the Fonz. And sometimes, I'm not sure why, he wanted to know whether I would rather freeze to death or fry to death.)

Perhaps most notably, "Best Damn etc." is either entirely unencumbered by format, or encumbered by so many formats as to be rendered unclassifiable. Maybe over on HBO they are trying to score points for originality, but elsewhere they are sending in the clones. A successful format the show has seen is a successful format the show has adopted. In this way, "The Best Damn Sports Show, Period" is an excellent example of the strange Möbius-strip shape TV has taken on lately. Start with "The View" and throw in some of "America's Funniest Sports Videos," a "Daily Show"-style newscast, a few comedy sketches in the "SNL" mold (largely unfunny) and a couple of celebrity guests, and even if you're watching alone, you're spending the evening in front of the TV with your buddies on TV.

But this conflation of superheroes, this quorum of stars gathered in a mock living room much like (hey!) your own is, essentially, what the "The Best Damn Sports Show, Period" is all about -- real guys, real guy talk, real superstar athletes who act just like regular guys, quaffing a brew, grilling a steak, making the sponsors happy, making the viewers feel like part of the team. You may not be able to claim you've never allowed a sack in your entire career, but you can eat at the local Outback Steakhouse pretty much whenever. It's mirror TV -- even if the mirror is slightly distorted to make it look as though you, too, can hang out with the Rock and blow smoke up his ass like it's just another day in celebrity-land for you. And if you spend two hours in front of "The Best Damn Sports Show, Period" every night, then, damn, I guess it is.

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