For most, a career in sports broadcasting at this stage merely is an intriguing notion, promising glamour, travel and the chance to stick a microphone in Derek Jeter's face.

But this week it has been the grown-ups' turn at the workshop, and the real world never is far from their thoughts, now more than ever.

When Ed Ingles, the veteran radio man who has run these clinics for 10 years, told me a record 16 adults had signed up because of the economy, I thought he meant to say in spite of it.

Nope. It turns out many people knocked off one career path take the opportunity to seek another, and one of those paths led to Hofstra. Of five participants I spoke to, ranging in age from 17 to 42, two were full-time students and the other three had been laid off recently.

"I'm treating it as one door closes, another opens,'' said CJ Colonna, 26, who was "shocked'' when she was laid off from a marketing job at Everlast but was up for trying something new.

That included an on-camera question for Hofstra defensive coordinator Rich Nagy Tuesday, a task she aced but that left most of her classmates tangled in a web of nervousness and over-earnestness.

That is part of the idea in exploring a job that is more difficult than it appears. Several campers said they were there not only to learn how to do things, but whether they could.

"I want to see if I have the guts to go on camera and get it right,'' Keith Cousin said.

Cousin, 42, majored in TV production at Hofstra, graduating in 1988. Earlier this year he was laid off from a job designing graphics for a financial institution.

"My friends told me I should have been a play-by-play guy,'' he said.

So there he was, at a cost of $1,100 for six days, studying all aspects of broadcasting and hearing speakers such as CBS reporter Tracy Wolfson, an alumna of Ingles' first program, at NYU. (This is the eighth summer at Hofstra.)

Tuesday, former WNBC anchor Len Berman spoke and discouraged students from getting discouraged. He recalled his father trying to talk him out of TV by saying, "There's only one Walter Cronkite.''

There was only one of him, but there are countless paths to success, Berman stressed.

Brandon Robinson, 24, a graduate student at Hofstra, said he co-hosted a radio show about the Nets with Albert King . . . when Robinson was 12. "I have always known what I wanted to do,'' he said.

Molly Jo Rosen, 23, who specializes in thoroughbred racing, has experience in writing, radio and TV production, but she wanted to gauge herself as an on-camera personality.

The guiding force behind the diverse group is Ingles, 77, the "professional in residence'' at Hofstra's radio station, who has been in the business more than half a century.

After that rocky session with Nagy, he recalled for students his adventures interviewing complicated subjects from Mickey Mantle to Vince Lombardi.

It all sounded pretty cool, but for his audience the reality remained that getting one foot inside the door of the locker room is the step that matters most.

"Being a female, being Hispanic, knowing how few people there were like me in the business, I knew it would be a challenge; that just makes it more attractive,'' Colonna said.

"At this point I'm not going to give up. Is it frustrating? Is it taking a lot longer than I thought it would to get where I want to be? Absolutely. But I'm always up for a good challenge.''