A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: SportCard Greetings cards.

Price: $1-$2 per card. (Phone number:

800 333-8767.)

On the cover is a cartoon rendering of a bald, goggled basketball player in a yellow uniform--no, Kareem, it’s not you, give your lawyers the day off--along with an inscription: “Now that you’ve graduated, you’re just like me--a free agent looking for work.”

Inside, the punch line: “Except that I can be wholly mediocre in my profession and still be guaranteed seven figures. Congratulations.”

Sports greeting cards that push the envelope--that is the game plan at SportCard Greetings, a Placentia-based outfit with 30 often-irreverent selections, offering insults and good-old-boy humor for birthdays, graduations and holidays.

One Christmas theme: A messy melted snowman splattered across the three-point line of a basketball court, captioned: “Frosty’s career was over once he got hot from the outside.”

The humor ranges from dumb to smirk-along, with trivia thrown in to boot. An example on the back of a soccer-themed card: “For whatever reason, Tomas Lundman of Sweden headed a soccer ball continuously for 7 hours 16 minutes on Nov. 26, 1994. Guinness recognizes this as a world record.”