The Bob Knight Pre-Victory Victory Tour continues today, with either live or taped appearances on "Larry King Weekend," The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," "Lubbock Week In Review," "Total Request Live," "Snick," and "WWF Smackdown."

	Bob Knight and Texas Tech -- could it be a happy marriage?

Actually, we kid about that last one. After his pan-seared grilling from with Bob Costas for HBO's "Another Sports Interview Show Nobody Asked For," Vince McMahon was only in a mood to beat up the guy who talked him into football in the first place.

But Knight's whirlwind tour of our nation's microphones, which included Costas on Wednesday and Charlie Rose on Thursday, is another breathtaking example of his resilience, magnetism and encyclopedic knowledge of the media baboon cage. His ability to charm interviewers in need has never been more in evidence, and because of that, he's back in America's weird graces again.

Granted, he's not all the way back. We are, after all, talking about Texas Tech here, a mostly football-enriched school located somewhere between Mexico and "Watch Out For That Snake, You Fool!" It ain't Broadway, although in college basketball, the spotlight does tend to shift a bit.

Say, like, Hampton, Va.

Still, Knight is turning what by rights should be a mundane coaching situation into dinner theatre, as you knew he would. In fact, we'll bet that he knew, perhaps on a cellular level, that Costas was spoiling for a televised fight with McMahon, whose oleaginous presence is at least as repellent as it is staggering.

After that bit of menacing chat, Knight could, and did, come off as St. Francis of Assisi chatting up the squirrels.

He always remembered to be vague, but not insultingly so, about the Texas Tech job, because of a state law that requires a 10-day waiting period between a job opening and the ritual shredding of all job applications.

He remembered to say that he wasn't actually suing Indiana for mental cruelty, but that he reserved the right to sue Indiana for alienation of affection. Or something like that.

He remembered not to apologize for merging his coaching with Neil Reed's windpipe, or to even mention Reed's windpipe at all.

But in fairness, Costas wasn't really after that anyway. He knows Knight, probably better than most of us. Having avoided the mistake Roy Firestone made of not even bringing up the incident, he still played cocktail lounge piano to Knight's song stylings, as he, you, I, and Knight himself, knew very well he would.

This is not to pillory Costas, mind you. Costas is pretty good at his craft, we are told, but he was up against the Sun God of resiliency, non-Bill Clinton division. Knight had him where he wanted him because the very act of getting Knight on a television show implies that you are playing on his court, by his rules. He is smart, he is clever, he knows how to deflect questions either gently or viciously, depending on the questioner, and he is good TV for people whose couch cushions long ago became butt-shaped.

Plus, unlike most interview subjects, he has done as much homework on the interviewer as the interviewer has done on him. He may have used too flimsy a test line with Connie Chung all those years ago on "60 Minutes," and he might have been a bit too contemptuous with Jeremy Schaap last year, forgetting the worst way to make people think you're not a bully is to act like a bully."

But he has done hundreds of interviews over the years, and without looking it up, I'm willing to wager his winning percentage is better in those encounters than in basketball games.

And he won two more this week that we know of. Of course, we still haven't seen him on "Crossfire," "Wall Street Week With A Stockbroker Defenestrating Himself," "True Hollywood Stories" or "CatDog." And we have no reason to think he'll turn up on "Oprah," "The View" or "Wuthering Heights 3000: Back To Andromeda."

We told you already. The man knows who he's dealing with, even more than we do.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a frequent contributor to ESPN.com.