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: “Personal Approach--A Game Plan for Unlimited Success,” by Johnnie Johnson.

Price: $22.95 (Dove Books).

Self-help gurus can be dangerous. Take, for example, the Kings, who find themselves in their sorry current state largely because Barry Melrose listened to Anthony Robbins, who advised Melrose to awaken the giant within, confront his inner demons with hair gel and trade all of his superstar scorers for plodding grinders who have no idea how to awaken the red light within the Forum.

Yet, the self-help publishing business remains a boom industry, and from the author’s perspective, it’s easy to see why: self helps improve his lifestyle through small fortune generated by book sales.

When the author happens to be a successful former professional athlete, so much the better. Johnnie Johnson was one of the last great Rams, an all-pro defensive back during the team’s Anaheim years.

How was such achievement possible?

People want to know, so Johnson gives motivational speeches and writes motivational books. “Personal Approach” is an X-and-O primer on “How to Take IMMEDIATE Control of Your Life!”

Interesting is Johnson on “winners” and “losers.”

According to Johnson, the O.J Simpson criminal trial was won by Johnnie Cochran, who “approached the case as if he owned it” and proceeded the same way “top athletes perform on the road, in bad weather, facing a hostile crowd and against enormous odds.”

Christopher Darden, on the other hand, allowed “the world . . . to see him sweat” and “lost his cool, which nearly landed him in jail and nearly created a huge problem for the prosecution’s team.”

Others fail, because of “cognitive dissonance,” the inability to make up one’s mind; or suffer from “post-dissonance,” another term for buyer’s remorse. The football fans in St. Louis are experiencing post-dissonance.