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What: “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel.”

Where: HBO, tonight, 10.

Pat Summerall, associated with the NFL as a player and broadcaster for more than 50 years, discusses his longtime battle with alcoholism in the lead segment of this edition of “Real Sports.”

Tom Brookshier, who was Summerall’s broadcast partner until 1981, is among those interviewed.

“I’ve never had a brother, but if I had one, it would be Tom Brookshier,” Summerall says. “We just had so much in common. We had such a good time. We socialized. We entertained. People entertained us.

“I’ve often said that if we had stayed together, we’d probably both be dead by now. The track was too fast.”

An intervention by 10 of Summerall’s closest friends was held in 1992 in Philadelphia. It led to a trip to Palm Springs and a stay in the Betty Ford Center for alcohol abuse treatment.

“I was the guy who set Pat up,” Brookshier says of the intervention. “As soon as he hit the door, Hugh Culverhouse ... grabbed Pat by the hand and pulled him right in the door. And then Pat knew he had been had.”

Deane Beman, then commissioner of the PGA Tour, and former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle were among those who participated in the intervention.

Summerall stayed 33 days at the Betty Ford Center, though the normal stay is 28.

“I stayed at the Betty Ford Center five extra days because they told me that I was so mad the first five days they didn’t count,” he says.

Summerall, who has been sober since, teamed with John Madden on CBS and later Fox from 1981 through the 2002 Super Bowl. Summerall continued announcing Dallas Cowboy games, but his health declined, and after 12 years of sobriety, his liver shut down. A liver transplant saved his life.

Reporter Mary Carillo asks Summerall, “Do you think you deserve that liver?”

Summerall: “I’m not sure. If I deserved it, I must have deserved it, or I wouldn’t have gotten it. But based on my life before I went to the Betty Ford Center, my answer to that question is no. But I’m not sure now. I think I’ve become a better person. I think I’ve become a purer person.”

-- Larry Stewart