ESPN’s original primetime movie about Bobby Knight, “A Season on the Brink,” Sunday night, was so filled with what ESPN called “intense adult language,” that the network chose to simultaneously run a “bleeped” version on ESPN2.

But, as ESPN2 viewers were startled to discover, the sanitized, family-viewing version was still so loaded with ear-popping profanities that it made little difference. And yesterday, ESPN re-ran it at 1 p.m.

Preliminary numbers show that ESPN and ESPN2 combined to do a four rating – big for cable, especially against CBS’s “9/11” documentary – and was seen in approximately three million homes.