Sep 25, 2005 By John Mehno For The 3 min read

OK, ESPN hired actor Dick Butkus to play the head football coach of Montour High School in a faux reality series. Judging from the first episode of “Bound For Glory,” Butkus is going to browbeat kids so they become winners. (Want to bet that by the end of the season, he’s a huggable grizzly bear whose gruff tough love has molded young men?)

Butkus was a Hall of Fame linebacker for the Chicago Bears from 1965-73, an absolute beast who dominated games.

His significant personal accomplishments aside, he wasn’t part of a winning program.

The Bears teams he played on were 48-66-4 and never made the playoffs. The Bears had two winning seasons in his career (9-5 in 1965 and 7-6-1 in ’67) and finished .500 once (7-7 in ’68) in nine years.

But it’s all show biz and “reality” is loosely defined.

Since they were casting from the Hollywood B list, you just wish they would have brought in Pamela Anderson as the make-believe cheerleader coach.

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The Pittsburgh Pirates will start searching for a manager in another week and you’ll hear the word “retread” a lot.

It’s used dismissively and means the guy was probably fired once or twice.

Among the people to whom that label can be applied is current New York Yankees manager Joe Torre, who had been canned by the New York Mets, Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals before he landed in the Bronx.

Aided by a virtually unlimited payroll, Torre has had great success and is in demand as a motivational speaker.

Tony La Russa, the smartest man in baseball (just ask Dave Duncan), had been dismissed by the Chicago White Sox and allowed to leave by the Oakland Athletics before he went to the Cardinals.

The Cardinals have done pretty well with their “retread.”

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The Rolling Stones will make music and millions this Wednesday at PNC Park, playing on a huge stage that stretches across the outfield.

The transformation started an hour after last Thursday’s day game. It’s an open secret that the Pirates aren’t positive the field will be playable in time for Friday’s scheduled 7:05 start against the Milwaukee Brewers.

Just four years ago the Pirates turned away the high school championship baseball games because of concerns about killing the grass.

They took a major, well-deserved PR hit on that and have since reversed the policy.

Good thing, too, because the Pirates are aggressively seeking more concert dates. Put 35,000 people in the park, a lot of them paying a premium price for beer and … well, you do the math.

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By the way, the contract for the Rolling Stones stipulates that both Mick Jagger and Keith Richard have private dressing rooms.

Even baseball players don’t have the nerve to make that demand.

John Mehno can be reached at johnmehno@lycos.com