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: ESPN Magazine promotion.

Hot Corner doesn’t like to write about the future, usually dealing with the present and, at times, preferring to wallow in nostalgia.

But Chris Berman changed that informal policy when some promotional literature for ESPN Magazine landed in an editor’s mailbox.

First, a name change may be in order. Let’s get it over right now and rename it Chris Berman magazine.

Why?

Because it seems painfully obvious--at least from the promotional literature--that the Bermanization of sports is marching toward another medium, ready to take it over and squeeze out all those big words and big ideas that were just cluttering up sports magazines.

But don’t take Hot Corner’s word for it. Editor-in-chief John Papanek, formerly of Sports Illustrated, gets the point across, well, more succinctly, in a four-page letter to potential subscribers, saying:

”. . . With ESPN MAGAZINE, you’ll notice a whole different attitude. We take sports seriously, but we also have fun.

“Fun to read. Easy to look at. Over-sized for greater impact. Packed with that fast-paced, comin’-at-you ‘ESPN style.’ ESPN MAGAZINE gives you the good stuff--packaged the way you like.

“Bigger pictures, quicker takes.

“Shorter, snappier stories. Not 10-page yawners about some minor league hockey player growing up on a farm in Manitoba. Or some former world leader stalking bone fish off the Florida coast.”

Two-syllable words--three if you want to push the envelope--seem to be the criteria for copy. In fact, staff writer Gene Wojciechowski, a former Times and Chicago Tribune reporter, might want to rethink his byline if he wants to do well at ESPN Magazine.

How about sticking with just plain old Wojo?

Now, that’s a name Chris Berman will love.