Pardon me for being fearful about the future of basketball.

During the holidays, I’ve seen five groups of boys in the 12-16 age range hooping it up in driveways and on school grounds. The aberrant influence of highlight bites on television was gruesomely apparent; it’s obvious that coaches from junior highs on up face horrendous challenges.

For the most part, these kids were working on variations of their dunk shots or moving out far beyond any semblance of a free-throw line to plunk from long distance. Few were playing games, just showing off for each other, sometimes on a hoop bent by failed slams. About the only time they did much dribbling was when they drove to gain momentum for a dunk.

I saw two instances with kids going one-on-one, dribbling for position and, wonder of wonders, pulling up for midrange shots in the 10- to 15-foot category. You know, as good basketball should be played – the way females are playing it now with the purity and team effort that once endeared the sport to us.

What do you see on SportsCenter blips? Dunks and treys, to hell with patterns, assists and critical defense. They slip in a few blocks, but kids see what they’re peddling and try to emulate it too early. Junior high and high school coaches have to convince people there’s far more to it than that, like sharing with others. Colleges don’t get nearly the fundamentally sound people they once did.

Nuts to the pros – they’re the root of the problem. But it sure would be great to get back to when kids played real basketball instead of auditioning for show biz circuses.

l This is for people who appreciate good football and enjoy watching those who have mastered it pretty well. Don’t watch the NFL-level video game a grandson has been playing. It’s brutal, studiously violent and leaves the impression that players are nothing but a mob of maimers and ogres who throw expertise and finesse to the winds to pound some unfortunate soul to a pulp.

Not sure of the name of this disgrace, but it’s from the same stable as a lot of violent trash kids can get ahold of. After virtually every play, one, two or even three defenders jump on, kick, try to castrate or attempt just about anything else a death-camp manager would devise to disable an adversary.

Plays are run, but the aftermaths are disgusting. It’s likely to give anyone who appreciates good football a queasy stomach. Football and the people in it are far better than this. If I were an NFL performer, I’d be madder than Howard Stern when some top-heavy bimbo fails to show up for one of his tasteless TV debacles.

l If you’re a young woman basketball player with talent and desire and are seeking direction, discipline and intensity, come to Kansas and join coach Bonnie Henrickson. If you push yourself, you’ll be involved in a program where you can experience great fun and immense satisfaction.

Bonnie doesn’t suffer fools. She cuts to the quick, tells it like it is and happens to know her game. This is only the beginning, folks, only the beginning, as Charles Wininger used to declare on radio’s “Showboat.”

Another Henrickson policy I adore is that she makes her players tape over tattoos for games. I have yet to see any such body art, male or female, that doesn’t resemble an infection or outbreak of psoriasis.

Henrickson is giving us basketball as it should be played rather than as a show-and-tell for exhibitionists.