You'd think there'd be enough sports out there - from pro and college baseball, hoops and football to your various X-games and strongmen competitions - that ESPN would have its roster full.

Instead, the sports network is starting its own competition tonight with the reality show "Beg, Borrow & Deal."

The new show looks like "The Amazing Race" - teams compete to get from one place to another for a prize. But while the "Race" goes globetrotting in pairs of two, with a few bucks in its pocket, "Beg" stays in the country but strips its teams of money. That means the two "Beg" teams of four - two men and two women on each team - must use their wits, coast to coast, for transportation, food and lodging.

ESPN die-hards might well wonder: What's the sports connection?

The connection is that each team must complete 10 of 40 sports-related challenges, including catching a 35-yard pass from an NFL quarterback and riding a Zamboni between periods of an NHL playoff game.

"I thought it was going to be an extreme-sports thing, doing crazy, dangerous things like that," said Tony Farina of Waterbury, the only contestant from the Northeast on a show dominated by Californians.

The 28-year-old Coca-Cola deliveryman in western Connecticut said he applied after seeing an item on the ESPN website when he was checking stats for his fantasy sports teams.

Farina said he thought he'd be a natural.

"I guess everybody thinks I'm a little crazy. I'd be willing to do whatever," Farina said. "I've jumped out of an airplane before. Just about the only thing I haven't done is bungee jump."

Farina was the only contestant chosen from his videotape alone. "He blew us away," said executive producer Neil Mandt in Los Angeles. "He was so full of energy."

Farina and other contestants had no idea what the show would entail.

"I thought we'd have a Winnebago or something," said Farina. "I didn't realize we were going to be, like, homeless."

Farina's being from this area didn't help much when the show began in Times Square. "I'd been to Madison Square Garden for some UConn games and go to a couple of Yankees games a year. But I didn't really go into the city. I didn't know anybody down there and didn't have a good understanding of the subway systems."

So Farina was just as lost as anybody else when the competition started.

"Beg, Borrow & Deal" was originally cast more than a year ago, Mandt said. That's when filming was to have begun, but fallout from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks delayed the show.

Everything was pushed back to April - and all but two of the original contestants were still able to compete.Some may think having teams surrounded by a camera crew may help their chances of obtaining help from strangers. "In many cases, it actually hurts them," Mandt said. "If you're a security guard, and a camera is on you, you are going to do your job."

"There was extra tight security everywhere," Mandt said. "But common sense was not going out the window. People see these were just good people trying to have fun."

Tonight's premiere shows one team having extraordinary luck - getting two challenges completed in two days, being allowed to use a hotel suite to crash one night and even getting a lift from an NFL star. Farina's team, by contrast, spends the early going spinning wheels at a contestant's friends' house in Ithaca, N.Y.

Mandt said things even up by the second episode, and one team does make it to the San Francisco finish line in 30 days - and eight episodes.

Winners get all-expenses-paid trips for two people to four major sports championships.

Along the way, all kinds of interesting encounters happen, including intimate ones (though none trade sexual favors for food, shelter or rides, Mandt said).

That ought to keep the ESPN fans tuned in between beer commercials.

While "Beg" may not satisfy the diehard sports nut who watches only games, Mandt said, "If you're the kind of person who watches TV for TV, for any entertainment purposes, you're going to love this. It's going to give you what you want in entertainment and some real cool sports stuff. Because you're up close and personal with these sports stars, being fun. You're getting insight you wouldn't normally see. And you're seeing eight completely regular people - the kind of people every man and woman could relate to - doing amazing adventures while surviving on nothing but their wits."



"Beg, Borrow & Deal" has its premiere on ESPN tonight at 8.