TV tonight: Bobby Valentine vs. Michael Strahan

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/ FROM KEITH GROLLER There's no baseball or live football on television tonight (sorry but I am not counting Arkansas State at Louisiana-Lafayette), but there is some interesting sports-related programming. Most notably, Bob Costas has a sitdown interview with fired Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine on his "Costas Tonight" show on the NBC Sports Network at 10 p.m. Others segments include the the debut of NBC Sports’ and Access Hollywood’s Michelle Beadle (formerly of ESPN's Sports Nation) joining Costas to discuss top trending social media topics; and former NHL star and current NBC Sports Group analyst Jeremy Roenick will discuss the NHL lockout, and his experience going through a similar thing in 2005 when he lost an estimated $8 million in salary. Meanwhile, on Costas' old stomping grounds, HBO, the debut of the latest edition of "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel" has a profile of Michael Strahan and talks about his demanding TV schedule which includes working for Fox on the NFL pregame shows on Sundays in Hollywood, and, of course, his new Monday through Friday morning role as co-host with Kelly Ripa on "Live with Kelly and Michael" in New York City. The segment also talks about Strahan's failed marriages and how he once told Regis Philbin he'd love to replace him one day. As for co-hosting with Ripa, Strahan said: "I feel more comfortable and less nervous than I ever was running out of a tunnel at a game knowing I'd have to fight this big 350-pound guy. It's a lot easier walking out here with Kelly than looking at some ugly guy in a facemask thinking he wants to kill me." I've seen the segment and found it amusing. Even better is the segment that follows with Frank Deford talking about the tragedy involving a star girls volleyball player in Iowa City. Caroline Found predicted her team would repeat as state champs. But the team and the community were left devastated by two tragedies in a five-month span. You talk about an emotional, goose-bump producing segment. Put it this way, the segment gave an entirely new meaning to the famous Neil Diamond song "Sweet Caroline." There is also a feature on NFL Films and father-son team of Ed and Steve Sabol. It's a repeat of a feature that first aired in 2007, but it's still worth a look, especially in the aftermath of the recent passing of Steve Sabol. "Real Sports" is repeated several times on both HBO and HBO2 in the week or 10 days.