His use of the n-word in a story.

Mushnick’s in-your-face suggestion that the Brooklyn Nets consider renaming themselves the “New York N——” or a phrase including the b-word springs from his longtime criticism of the fact that rapper Jay-Z, who uses both terms in his music, is a part-owner of the Brooklyn Nets.

But the phrase has prompted an explosion of criticism accusing Mushnick of lazy journalism and outright racism, as everyone from MTV.com to New York Magazine and the National Association of Black Journalists called him out on his choice of words.

The columnist, however, remained unapologetic about using the term.

“I’ve been condemning it’s return, it’s mainstreaming…I was raised in a household that never heard the word,” said the columnist of his decision to deploy the epithet himself. “It was clearly a matter of pointed sarcasm. But the most difficult thing to defend in our business is condemnation as an anti-black racist.”

Still, I think there’s a big difference between quoting someone else’s use of such a jarring racial epithet and a columnist using the word himself, especially in a sarcastic line stuck inside a column largely focused on other topics.

Much as the columnist says he hates the term and wants to constantly point out the Nets’ association with a man who he feels is mainstreaming the word, Mushnick does a bit of that himself by tossing off the word so casually.

The controversial section, falling more than 20 paragraphs into his May 4 column, asserted: “As long as the Nets are allowing Jay-Z to call their marketing shots— what a shock that he chose black and white as the new team colors to stress, as the Nets explained, their new ‘urban’ home— why not have him apply the full Jay-Z treatment?

“Why the Brooklyn Nets when they can be the New York N——s? The cheerleaders could be the Brooklyn B—-hes or Hoes. Team logo? A 9 mm with hollow-tip shell casings strewn beneath. Wanna be Jay-Z hip? Then go all the way!”

Mushnick blames coverage on the Internet and in rival publications such as the New York Daily News for much of the criticism he’s received.

“People took this second hand,” he said. “How do I control what people get second hand and third hand and run with it? Nobody who reads me regularly thinks I’m a racist. This is more about the Internet than me.”

But such comments also reveal another mistake: Thinking that someone has to be racist to say something racially insulting or rooted in prejudice.

As I have written many times before, prejudice is often seductive and appealing; it can explain the world in deceptively simple terms. And those who fail to respect the complexities of these discussions are even more likely to make the kinds of mistakes that bring furor and condemnation.

Mushnick also writes for a newspaper which has taken criticism in the past for publishing racially insensitive material – notably a 2009 cartoon showing police shooting a monkey credited with writing national health care legislation championed by Democrats. Critics said the cartoon was a veiled, insulting depiction of the legislation’s most prominent advocate, African-American President Barack Obama.

The columnist insists he takes marching orders from no one and editors didn’t red flag his use of the n-word because he rails against Jay-Z on this issue often.

But the Internet also brings lots of readers to his columns who may not see all or even most of what he writes. Readers shouldn’t need to know the context of other columns to understand what is said in each one.

And since so many people have taken offense at the usage, it seems obvious there was likely a more effective way to make the same point.

But as someone who has been called that word more than once in my life, I still have to disagree with well-meaning groups such as the New York Association of Black Journalists, whose president demanded assurances “this vile word will never appear in this publication again.”

I think there are times when the word deserves to be published in its full, un-dashed, un-euphemized form, if only to remind us of its ugly power.

I once wrote a story about an episode of a TV show where the word was used close to 70 times in a searching exploration of such issues. Back then, I wrote the word out one time in my story; it seemed beyond silly to devote an expansive story to such a subject and never say, even once, exactly what you’re talking about.

There is a balance between respecting the ugliness of the word and ensuring that columnists and others have the ability to fully express themselves and explore ideas about race, oppression and society.

Blanket bans on words needlessly handcuff writers to police the actions of a few who cross the line.

I grew up in a neighborhood where black people used that word to refer to other black people, both in affection and anger. Untangling that mass of contradiction, which Jay-Z reflects and amplifies in his own music, requires more than a sarcastic comment tucked inside one section of a column.

Defiant as Mushnick remains, I left our conversation hoping he might have learned that lesson at least.

Because, what good is it to deliver a lesson about the danger of mainstreaming one of the worst racial epithets in America, if your language angers everyone so much they never get the message?

If you’re ESPN, you pile on the glitz and glamour, instructing your lead anchors to refrain from announcing picks everyone already knows until the commissioner gives his okay, drowning the whole proceeding in a blizzard of on-screen graphics, from the floor reports, expert analysis and buzzy catchphrases.

And it doesn’t hurt when the picks after the first two erupt in a blizzard of deal-making.

“This is buckle your seatbelts (time),” anchor Chris Berman announced during the channel’s live coverage of the NFL draft Thursday, noting four teams had switched their picking order by the sixth choice.

But fans had known since March that the Washington Redskins were getting the second slot, trading their place in the second round to the St. Louis Rams. The only draft-related news the public knew earlier was the fact that Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck was going to the Indianapolis Colts as the very first pick.

Still, ESPN’s coverage of the NFL Draft in primetime was an interesting look at how an experienced crew provides a gleaming platform for what could be a wonky step in the offseason.

Like it or don’t, professional football has become America’s Game – the last media platform which unites all demographics in an orgy of consumption and fan passion.

So it makes sense that the Draft would become one of the biggest rituals in sports television — despite the details knows before it starts — offered as a tasty offseason morsel to fans jonesing for a bit of pigskin madness before the baseball or basketball seasons get interesting.

ESPN, as always, is in the crosshairs of a gigantic sports event and its own corporate priorities. With so many important on-air franchises tied to the NFL, they have a vested interest in pumping up the Draft’s importance, even as they try to cover it incisively as a sports journalism entity.

For the Worldwide Leader, that means mostly accepting that the TV broadcast will be a celebration of all the hopes wrapped up in the marquee picks, hailing Baylor QB Robert Griffin’s “go catch your dreams” socks after his draft by the Redskins and welcoming Trent Richardson’s move to the Cleveland Browns with enough excitement to pop a forehead vein.

(Kudos to former Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden for his willingness to point out the weaknesses in some players, noting inconsistencies in Dallas Cowboy’s pick Morris Calibourne’s game after his selection.)

Both ESPN and the NFL Network spread word before the draft that they wouldn’t be tipping who was picked before they were announced by showing possible picks on the phone before Goodell announced their names onstage.

But that promise began to fray almost immediately, as Luck – who was already the known likely first pick – was shown on his phone before his name was called and the channel repeatedly cut to shots of early picks before they were announced.

Wasn’t long before a viewer could realize the guy shown onscreen was about to take the stage, though Berman, Gruden and analyst Mel Kiper Jr. avoided saying anything directly.

Analysts Chris Mortensen and Adam Schefter also revealed who would be picked early, announcing likely picks by the Cowboys and Buccaneers minutes before they would be officially revealed. Not sure avoiding the cellphone shots of players helps much when you have NFL analysts calling out names with certainty, anyway.

I have other nitpicks up my sleeve as well: At times, the anchors had trouble making themselves heard over the crowd noise, a problem you’d think ESPN would be prepared for by this point. Trading limited commercials in the early going for a sea of Bud Light signage was probably a good idea, but still a bit intrusive (player interviews from the Bud Light Blue Room? Really?)

And at times the crowd was reacting heartily inside Radio City Music Hall with no comment from the anchors. Seems odd to use the raucous scene as a backdrop, then avoid noting when a chorus of boos breaks out or an avalanche of cheers erupts.

Still, I enjoyed the footage ESPN offered of early picks in their on-field performance, reminding fans of top players strengths and weaknesses. And the blizzard of information wedged onscreen through several tickers and zooming graphics provided enough information to choke even the hungriest fantasy football geek.

ESPN’s draft coverage continues from 7 to 11 tonight and noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, giving the Worldwide Leader plenty of time to make up for its few missteps on Thursday.

Wonder how they’ll get us all hyped about the second round?

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times and a 1990 graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism. He also provides regular commentary for National Public Radio and has been published by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.

But the sports world seems to have accepted the casual sexism of Augusta National in ways even the toughest presidential contenders have not, tolerating the Georgia country club’s historic exclusion of female members because the storied organization hosts the biggest championship in professional golf – the Masters tournament, which underway this week.

I’m sure professional sports journalists are tired of this debate, which rolls around annually like clockwork. The issue got a bit more play this year, as one of the tournament’s top three sponsors, IBM, now has a female CEO, Virginia Rometty, creating an uncomfortable situation.

The club generally extends courtesy memberships to heads of sponsoring companies. But this time, one of those companies is run by a woman – itself a head-shaking, aren’t-we-past-this-already kind of turn.

Rometty herself has said nothing about the flap and Augusta isn’t even saying whether she was offered membership. The Wall Street Journal has reported she is attending the tournament; so much for taking a strong stand on women’s rights.

Still, even IBM, one of the stodgiest companies in the technology universe, has a more modern outlook than Augusta National, where English golfer Lee Westwood had the stones to joke about the whole issue in a comment reported by the Associated Press.

“What gender issue?” he reportedly said. “I’m a man.”

Privileged males joking about their success in excluding others feels so 1950s, but not nearly so retro as the attitude of the sportswriters and broadcasters benefiting from this club’s power and influence.

No matter how tiresome it seems sports journalists should be pressing this club to get right with history, constantly. If one of journalism’s primary duties is to serve as the voice of the voiceless, there can be no more voiceless group than the array of girls who might one day want to wear a green Masters championship jacket – if only they were allowed in the door to compete.

If ESPN can make something dull as the NFL draft appealing over multiple days, surely they could turn needling Augusta National over its retrograde membership policies into a fun game.

Institute a countdown clock noting how long the sports world has been waiting for the kind of equality women have gotten everywhere else about 50 years ago. Or list all the places women now have access to – including war zones (although not in combat yet), space travel and serving as rabbis – other than Augusta National.

In my fantasy world, CBS announcers would mention the males-only membership every time they came back from commercials. And when Augusta moved the tournament to some other channel, whoever got the rights next would do the same thing, too.

Don’t give me that jazz about sports being a place where social activism and equality issues aren’t debated, either. I’m convinced one of the greatest forces for equality in this country has been the sports world, where fans could see with their own eyes how talented and smart athletes such as Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe and Muhammad Ali really were.

Imagine if Tiger Woods were barred from the Masters by a “no colored people” policy? How many sports journalists would jump all over that story like a dog working a grease-covered bone?

The real enemy of equality isn’t evil people gathered in smoke-filled backrooms plotting on how to divide the world’s riches a little finer among themselves. Well, not always.

The real enemy, these days, is complacency. It’s accepting established unfairness because it takes too much effort, or costs too much, or upsets too many people to change it.

And all those who benefit from the Masters and good connections to Augusta National should take note; this is why discussion about these issues so often ends in protests and anger.

Because people with the power to do the right thing often don’t, until someone makes the pain of being wrong worse than the pain from getting it right.

So now the question remains, will sports journalists do their part?

And then one of her students piped up with a $1-billion question, inspiring the words you’re reading right now:

 “Can anybody build another sports network to compete with ESPN?”

A few years ago, that question would have been mostly academic. Who could have envisioned anyone with the deep pockets, access to talent, sporting event broadcasting rights and cable system access to challenge a brand which has spawned at least eight sister channels, a magazine, radio network, sprawling website and bustling mobile platforms?

How quickly the sports world can change. On Tuesday, CBS Sports Network will debut its showcase program featuring a talent they poached from the Worldwide Leader, Jim Rome. He’s expected to offer a show much like his old one, “Jim Rome is Burning,” with a coterie of new contributors including Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com, Will Carroll of SI.com and Jason Whitlock and Peter Schrager of FoxSports.com.

And Bloomberg News on Wednesday reported that media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp might be assembling plans for its own cable TV sports network, cobbled together from its SPEED and Fuel sports channels, along with 20 regional sports networks and its broadcast rights for sports such as World Cup soccer and Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts.

The story, which was sorta denied but off-the-record sources in a Los Angeles Times piece, feels more like a trial balloon than anything, rebooting rumors which have surfaced every few years for decades. Sports on cable TV may be the one area of modern media Murdoch doesn’t have a foothold, and he’s known as a man willing to lose huge sums to get into a media space he desires.

If true, the news might be a double-edged sword for sports fans. In one breath, they get expanded choice, a new player to challenge all the current players to step up their game, and new visibility for sports which may get short shrift, including mixed martial arts and car racing.

But the point of such an enterprise is to rack up higher carriage fees from the cable systems which currently carry Fuel and/or SPEED. Assuming Bloomberg’s tip pans out, that means eventually pushing Comcast and Time Warner and Verizon FIOS to pay more for the Fox Sports Network or whatever they call it, which means fans eventually pay more.

Just check the recent fate of NBC Sports Network – can’t anybody come up with more adventurous channel names, anymore? – for a clue how tough it really is to establish a new cable TV sports brand.

Despite its launch with a fair amount of fanfare leading into NBC’s broadcast of the Super Bowl this year, the channel hasn’t set ratings on fire and still leans a bit much on outdoorsy shows leftover from its former existence as the Outdoor Life Network.

It’s an enduring sports media irony that so many corporations now seem poised to compete with a channel which was nearly laughed out of the industry more than 30 years ago, when founders Bill and Scott Rasmussen decided to buy a satellite transponder in 1978 and try something new: a TV channel totally dedicated to sports.

As authors Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller laid out in their most-excellent oral history of ESPN, “Those Guys Have All the Fun,” two of the biggest turning points for the channel came when they got the right in 1998 to air a full season of NFL games and moved in 1993 to launch ESPN2 – a channel even some executives wasn’t sure they exactly needed.

“It’s wasn’t about Keith in a leather jacket, which is what I remembered,” Miller told me last year, referencing the first ESPN2 broadcast, a “SportsCenter” episode featuring anchor Keith Olbermann saying “Welcome to the end of my career.”

“It was about (the significance) of getting another channel called ESPN on cable, keeping the competition from developing a real challenger. Once you understood that, it all took on a different context.”

Now that competition has broken out in full flower, with NBC Sports Network offering hockey, Olympics coverage and Bob Costas, CBS ponying up Jim Rome and ESPN handling, it seems, everything else.

Does that leave much for Fox Sports to offer fans beyond the promise of World Cup soccer six years from now and a few college games in the Pac-12 and Big 12?

That likely depends on how much of Murdoch’s wallet he’s willing to open up, and what’s for sale. Given that ESPN was a big chunk of owner Walt Disney Co.’s first-quarter cable TV profit of $967 million this year, I’d say Uncle Rupert has lots of incentive to get in the game.

And, as usual for sports fans, we get to sit back and watch the action unfold.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times and a 1990 graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism. He also provides regular commentary for National Public Radio and has been published by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.

So I want you to know I’m well aware how far out on a limb I’m walking here, as I base this column around the thoughts of two other journalists on the serious subject of football players deliberately trying to injure opposing players.

A little background: Forbes columnist Jeff Bercovici pulled together an interesting story about a detail he noted in a piece by ESPN columnist Gregg Easterbrook.

The ESPN column noted how the practice of football coaches urging players to injure competitors has filtered to the high school level. And Easterbrook cited as evidence a high school game he witnessed where the coach urged just such action in the locker room.

As a media columnist, Bercovici had a natural question: Why didn’t Easterbrook name the coach? An emailed reply from the ESPN writer revealed why.

“In the case I mentioned today, I was not present as a journalist and did not have a notebook out,” Easterbrook wrote in an email Bercovici quoted. “I was present as a guest of a coach. Since I myself have coached (however modestly) they seemed to view me as a fellow coach.”

Instead, he told the principal but couldn’t say if the coach changed his ways.

But as a journalist and parent who has children competing in high school athletics right now, I had a different question: Why didn’t he try to stop the coach when it happened?

According to Easterbrook’s account, at least two players on the opposing team got injured after the coach urged his team to take out players. Seems the time to speak up about what was going on was in that moment, in the locker room, when a word or two to an overzealous coach might have stopped an awful circumstance.

Here’s where the air gets thin sitting on an armchair in media critic land. Even a scrub like I am knows it would be near-sacrilege to interrupt a coach in a crucial game trying to urge his team to a much-needed win.

But in the end, it’s that kind of intervention that is needed to curb the most excessive practices some competitors employ to win. Tough as it is to risk causing a loss, someone has to stand up and refuse to play ball.

The question Bercovici asked was a simpler one: Should Easterbrook have named the coach when he wrote about the incident in his column?

If people don’t know they’re on the record when you’re around, and you are in a situation in an off-work, non-journalism capacity, it isn’t fair to quote them – particularly when writing about something which could cost them their job.

Absent intervening in the moment, the best a journalist writing about the moment can do is to call the coach up, describe what you saw, and ask for permission to put him on the record after the fact. And not be surprised if the coach denies that request.

Sounds screwy, I know; but ethical journalists don’t quote people speaking in private unless they know they’re on the record, with rare exceptions.

It’s the same reason why it’s unethical to walk around a dinner party or social event with a tape recorder, capturing conversations people think they are having in private.

As we know from watching the fallout over allegations of “bounties” offered by the New Orleans Saints and charges of child molestation at Penn State, the sports culture and its respect for the authority of coaches can enable some awful behavior if it isn’t checked and questioned occasionally.

And that may be the best message any journalist can deliver. After they’ve made sure people aren’t getting hurt in the process.

Shimabuku, you may remember, is a sports anchor for the Fox affiliate in San Diego who got in major hot water for voicing a tart commentary on race car driver Danica Patrick which skewered her complaints about journalists calling her sexy above a headline reading “Danica Patrick: I’m sexy and I know it.”

His conclusion? She was “a word which starts with a ‘b’ and it’s not beautiful.” (Funny enough, the word I thought best described this commentary also started with a b: “boneheaded.”)

It’s important to confront sexism when it appears, and I was happy to see so many alert viewers and groups call Shimabuku on his crude mistake, which eventually prompted an on air apology and earned him a week’s suspension without pay, according to USA Today.

But, I asked the advocacy group’s leader, did you know about Patrick’s hypocrisy here, too?

That’s because Shimabuku’s ill-advised commentary was sparked by this quote from Patrick during a NASCAR media day, which he aired during the report.

“I don’t quite understand, when you’re referring to a girl – a female athlete in particular – that you have to use the word sexy,” she said. “It there any other word you can use to describe me?”

A quote in USA Today refined the issue further: “If there is a pretty girl, (reporters) don’t know how to describe her other than being sexy. It has such a negative connotation to it. You don’t say those kinds of things to frame it like that for a guy…But it seems like with female athletes, if they are pretty, (reporters) only know how to describe them in a sexual way.”

It’s an understandable frustration. But Patrick confuses the issue herself by appearing in so many sexy advertisements and magazine pictorials, that it seems a bit hypocritical to complain when the adjective is applied to her.

A quick Google search reveals a series of photos featuring Patrick perched on the hood of a sleek Ford, clad in a revealing black bikini for Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue.

Another click pulls up a different pictorial for SI, where her racing suit is pulled down to reveal a white swimsuit and a small tattoo of an American flag on her lower back. She has also posed in a sexy pictorial for FHM magazine.

And there’s the playful ads she’s starred in for GoDaddy.com; one featuring her in the shower, turning the tables on guys ogling her via their laptop and another implying she and co-star Jillian Michaels were about to do a photo shoot in the nude (they weren’t).

Playful and pretty as these appearances may be, there is no doubt they are also sexy – and that the point of every one is to leverage her sex appeal for attention.

So it’s tougher to fault journalists for using that adjective on her, because Patrick has made that quality such a part of her own public persona outside of the sport.

But that is a nuanced idea, requiring careful language, because Patrick also has a point: too many female athletes are reduced to sex objects in media coverage.

Shimabuku’s biggest mistake was trying to tackle a subject that requires nuance and sensitivity in such a brusque, insulting manner. Calling Patrick names does nothing to illuminate the issue at hand, derailing an interesting discussion with a sexist term, which seemed to prove her point.

I hope, once the dust settles over Shimabuku’s comments, that sports media finds a way to have this deeper conversation with Patrick. The driver has always seemed a bit ambivalent about her sex appeal, despite the sexy endorsement ads and photo shoots; perhaps she would be open to a discussion about the objectification of women in sports.

(I’m kinda wondering why a journalist at the press conference didn’t just ask: “Haven’t you helped create the sexy image you’re now complaining about?”)

I also hope the advocacy groups that complained so loudly about Shimabuku’s comments also contribute. Because the issue of addressing female athletes’ sex appeal in coverage without insult – especially when the woman herself has helped build the sexy image she later finds limiting and insulting – ain’t going away anytime soon.

And we should be able to talk about it without anyone flinging around any insulting b-words.

But I don’t think Anthony Federico should have lost his job.

Federico is the editor at ESPN who crafted the unthinking headline “Chink in the Armor” for the sports media giant’s mobile website at 2:30 a.m. Saturday, describing a Knicks loss hours before.

Thirty minutes later, the phrase was yanked amid an avalanche of criticism for employing a phrase considered a racial slur against Asian people in a headline over a story focusing on Lin’s problematic play.

But Federico, a 28-year-old, self-described “outspoken Christian” and former intern, told the New York Daily News he had used the phrase at least 100 times before in headlines and didn’t think of its implications when he put the phrase on the Knicks story.

Assuming there isn’t anything more problematic in his employment history and he’s telling the truth about his motives in creating the headline – two big ifs for some critics, I’ll allow – I don’t think this was a firing offense.

It really was a teaching moment lost in Big Media backpedaling.

Federico had the bad luck to get caught in the crosshairs of our increasingly diverse sports world, where a phrase accepted as a common expression in one context takes on another meaning when used to describe a different person.

Slap the phrase “call a spade a spade” on a story about problems with black athletes, and a common aphorism now sounds like a coded racial insult.

Just ask pundits who had to apologize for pointed language about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential election; if you don’t change how you think about coverage when the types of people you’re describing grows more diverse, the chances of making a mistake increase exponentially.

Experts say the best route to knocking down stereotypes is talking about difference, which means talking about mistakes rooted in difference, too.

But these days, when a race-based media controversy breaks out, the outlet in the crosshairs mostly wants it to go away. Fast.

Which means Federico is out the door, dismissed with a terse reference in a six-paragraph statement from ESPN on it all, noting “The ESPN employee responsible for our mobile headline has been terminated.”

It would be healthier to talk about the mistake, why it happened and how media outlets could avoid making similar mistakes. ESPN could explain why anchor Max Bretos was suspended for a month for using the same phrase last week, outlining why one use cost a man his job and another resulted in a leave.

Maybe then we could create a culture of understanding which reaches beyond individual examples and crises. So the next time a great player of a different ethnicity surfaces, media won’t make the same stupid mistakes insulting a different culture.

Some of this is the tenor of the times, no doubt. People of color are beyond accepting deliberate, insulting stereotypes inserted into the news mix, and we all have advocacy groups prepared to make sure media outlets know an increasing proportion of their audience is watching these issues very closely.

For me, this stuff isn’t about hurt feelings or taking offense. It’s about keeping the biggest outlets in media from becoming unthinking echo chambers for stereotypes, which limit people of color in society and demean them in the same stroke.

As a critic I reserve the capital punishment of medialand – calls for someone to lose a job – for people who have repeatedly and deliberately injected prejudice and stereotyping into their work, despite past protests or attempts to discuss the issue. (Yes, Pat Buchanan, that was a reference to you.)

That doesn’t seem to fit the bill in Federico’s case, unless there’s something about his circumstances that isn’t known publicly (given the risk of lawsuit, employers sometimes can’t talk about all their reasons for firing an employee, I’ll allow).

But there is something strange about the fact that the guy who deliberately wrote the New York Post’s “Amasian” headline still has his job, while a 28-year-old guy who made a horrible mistake does not.

Last Sunday, 111.3 million people sat in front of their TV screens at home to watch Super Bowl XLVI, the most eyeballs ever attached to a single television broadcast.

It was 300,000 people more than the next most-watched TV broadcast, which just happened to be last year’s Super Bowl.

Nearly 50 percent of all homes in America with TV sets were tuned to the game – 71 percent of all homes with sets actually turned on – and none of these figures include the number of people who watched in public places such as bars, which Nielsen doesn’t measure.

So a lot of people watched this game. And a lot of precedents were set in the process.

In fact, as I watched the game unfold, a host of ideas came to mind as abject lessons taught by the power of the last, great event to pull us all in front of our electronic hearths at the same time.

Here, now, are the Lessons I Learned From The Super Bowl:

Online streams don’t subtract audience, they add to it – NBC’s decision to stream the game online proved to be another massive success, with 2.1-million users signing up for the website stream, making it the most-watched single-game sports event ever online, according to the network. There were no commercials or halftime show online – probably because the network didn’t have the rights to present that material there. But that helped focus the action on the game, with an array of camera angles each user could choose from, allowing the stone football fan to immerse themselves in the contest. Take that, naysayers.

Bob Costas is worth his weight in Lombardi trophies – Perhaps only Costas could have led a pregame interview where he pushed NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a bit on the issue of concussions and player health in the middle of TV’s biggest party for football. His interview with Goodell had been taped earlier in the week at a town hall show in Indianapolis, which also included players who have sued the league over how their health issues have been handled. It was great to see NBC devote a little pre-game time to an important subject that doesn’t necessarily make the sports look wonderful.

Pregame feature stories don’t have to be mindless pabulum – On Sunday, I saw one of the best Super Bowl pregame feature stories in a long while, focused on Steve Gleason, a former player with the New Orleans Saints who was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The malady, in which nerves slowly lose the power to control muscles, makes it tough for those who have it to walk, talk and, eventually, to breathe. NBC’s look at how quickly ALS affected Gleason, though his spirit and outlook remains strong, told an emotional story without getting maudlin. Once again, a fine blueprint for future efforts.

If the game is exciting, nobody uses all those social media knickknacks – I found trying to keep up with all the Facebook sites, Shazam connections, smartphone apps and Twitter hash tags connected to the Big Game was mostly a pain in the end zone. Truth is, most of that stuff was only attractive when the game got really boring (okay, I did use a URL to find the new, full-size trailer for the Avengers movie; once a geek, always a geek). But if you’re watching the game with friends and/or family, the only time you’re really going to surf onto that other stuff is if the game starts sucking wind – because when the commercials come on, well, you’ve got to watch the commercials.

Releasing the Super Bowl commercials early online was mostly a mistake this time around – Last year’s Volkswagen commercial with the kid in the Darth Vader costume, which became the game’s most-liked commercial after it was released days early online, fooled advertisers into thinking they could preview all their cool commercials on the Internet and get similar results. But the lack of surprise sapped the juice out of most ads, so we would up talking most about Clint Eastwood’s advertisement for Chrysler, which was a surprise, instead of Matthew Broderick reprising Ferris Bueller or Jerry Seinfeld trying to give away the Soup Nazi.

Tim Tebow will be one heck of a commentator when he stops playing – Watching the Denver Broncos rookie quarterback make the media rounds, Tebow came off like the guy who benefited most from the Super Bowl who wasn’t playing in it. His comments about the teams and his own performance in the playoffs were appropriately humble and articulate, with no indication he was even close to fazed by the sports media world’s frenzy over his every move. As a Floridian who remembers his days leading the University of Florida’s Gators, I’m hoping he holds onto that humility and sense of proportion as his NFL ride gets even wilder.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times and a 1990 graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism. He also provides regular commentary for National Public Radio and has been published by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.

Witness the drubbing Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock is taking for a joke made online about New York Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin, centered on a stereotype about, um, the endowments of Asian American men.

Tweeted on Friday, the thoughtless barb drew a complaint from the Asian American Journalists Association and an apology from Whitlock by Sunday, who noted “I debased a feel-good sports moment. For that, I’m truly sorry.”

Whitlock’s mistake came less than a week after CNN pundit Roland Martin caused a similar uproar after posting two joking tweets during the Super Bowl. The messages played off physically disciplining men who enjoyed the sexy underwear ad starring soccer player David Beckham and a fan shown on television wearing a pink suit.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation complained that the posts promoted violence against gay people. CNN suspended Martin, who eventually apologized and met with the group Tuesday.

As someone who has written a lot about prejudice in media, I was surprised and intrigued by what happened here. Two African American commentators who have often written about prejudice and race issues themselves, fell into the kind of public mistakes you might expect from people who hadn’t spent any time thinking about these issues at all.

It struck me that we’re all on the cusp of an important issue: Transferring all the progress we’ve made in talking about African American issues in sports media and society to other marginalized groups whose struggles for equality are also in progress.

A measure of how far we have to go hit me after a visit to the Facebook page maintained by the AAJA’s MediaWatch group, where followers were criticizing a CNN panel discussing Lin and race issues in which no Asian commentators were featured.

I thought back to how I felt seeing African American issues dissected on some TV shows – I remember a debate on a Sunday politics show about controversy over public use of the word “niggardly” which included no African Americans – and I felt like I was hearing a broken record replay yet again.

These incidents are humbling reminders that those of us who have spent lots of time thinking about how prejudice affects some marginalized groups, still need to spend effort on how similar problems affect other types of people differently.

And it’s not just about policing ill-advised jokes on Twitter. Thanks to a lot of effort, we have lots of African American and female voices in sports media ready to provide a different perspective on issues of race, culture, society and athleticism

But there are far fewer voices of Asian descent. So it is increasingly easy for commentators to compare Lin’s cultural impact to retired NBA player Yao Ming, despite the fact that Lin is a Taiwanese American and Yao is a Chinese national who came to America after playing for years in the Chinese Basketball Association.

So here’s a few recommendations:

Expand the voices making commentary – Just as sports media outlets worked hard to find more black reporters and commentators to better cover issues and avoid stereotypes, its time for the pool to expand in other ways, too.

Where are the Asian voices in sports media, who can help explore what it means to see a breakout player like Lin subvert so many stereotypes about Asian Americans? Hey media executives – if you can’t find them, it’s time to start developing them. Just like you did with African Americans, once upon a time.

Avoid the wordplay, it just invites trouble – The phrase “Linsanity” is wonderful. But other catchphrases touching on racial stereotypes – “Knicks Lin!” or “We Love You Lin Time” – are not.

You would think experienced communicators would know this lesson by now. Phrases that lampoon another group’s struggle to learn English as a second language are pretty much the definition of cultural insensitivity, it seems.

But I also thought we were past making public jokes about the stereotype of Asian men lacking sexual prowess. So what do I know?

Separate insulting stereotypes from cultural observations –This is tricky territory for any writer, made more treacherous when you’re whipping out a column with minimal research, knowledge or expertise in discussing the culture you’re trying to explore.

Someone on the AAJA’s MediaWatch Facebook page pointed out a wonderful story in Forbes magazine about the lessons any worker could take from Lin’s example — which was unfortunately tarnished by a clumsy Tiger Mom reference at the end.

Yes, the point guard is humble, hardworking and religious. But you could say the same for Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, so connecting those qualities to Lin’s ethnic heritage might be an insulting stretch, absent more reporting.

Whitlock provided a good comeback Tuesday with a column noting one of Lin’s more remarkable attributes; he’s succeeding in a sport dominated by an African American culture some Asian Americans worry is hostile to them.

It’s too bad that he had to transmit a tweet embodying that hostility before realizing his mistake.

The sports media establishment has decades of experience trying to untangle prejudice against black people, women and Hispanics in sports reporting and commentary.

Perhaps its time to put those lessons to work for everybody, ensuring that all the progress we’ve made doesn’t just benefit a deserving few.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times and a 1990 graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism. He also provides regular commentary for National Public Radio and has been published by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.

So I understand why NBC is slicing and dicing “coverage” of Super Bowl XLVI within an inch of its life, beginning game day programming more than six hours before the game’s 6:25 p.m. start Sunday and folding in broadcasts from Indianapolis everywhere from “Access Hollywood” and the Weather Channel to The Golf Channel, CNBC, Spanish language channel Telemundo and “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”

 “This is not just a football game,” said Sam Flood, executive producer for NBC Sports and the NBC Sports Network, in a conference call with reporters. “It’s the biggest event in America. It’s a national holiday. We’re going to celebrate it.”

I’m just hoping that, in the middle of all that celebrating and cheerleading, there’s a little room for some actual, you know, journalism and fact-finding.

Curiously, NBC isn’t the only culprit here. The Sunday before the big game, CBS’ “60 Minutes” unfurled a feature story on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that felt like a big, wet kiss – complete with testimonials from team owners on the football field, talking about how much they love the guy who wrangled TV contracts ensuring they will continue to receive their $10 billion in annual revenue, carved up among 32 teams.

No talk about the blackout rules that keep those teams unable to sell game tickets in a depressed economic climate from airing their games on local television. No challenges to the bald observation that the NFL is a legal “cartel,” taking in tax money from communities to build giant stadiums, which enrich a small pool of owners and players.

No talk about last year’s lockout or how Goodell got it resolved. A lightning-fast gloss-over the issue of concussions and why players wind up refusing to admit they have them, playing in games where they can injure themselves further.

But this is the level of coverage we have come to expect from TV operations – even the venerated “60 Minutes” – when it comes to the cash cow which is the National Football League.

NBC sits in a worse position, mostly because it’s a fourth-place network with no programming even close to the viewership of NFL broadcasts. During the week of Jan. 23, just one NBC broadcast ranked among the top ten highest-rated shows of that week: the Pro Bowl game, which drew more than 12 million people to land in 8^th place.

So don’t expect any close looks at whether Indianapolis is really benefiting from the Super Bowl or Lucas Oil Stadium, which cost $720 million to build but the home team Indianapolis Colts have only paid $100 million to fund.

“I remember sitting with (Colts owner) Jim Irsay, as he was there trying to get Lucas oil Stadium here, sitting with the state legislature telling them how important football was to central Indiana,” said former Colts coach and NBC analyst Tony Dungy on a conference call with reporters this week.

“When I flew in here Sunday night and saw downtown and all the things they had going on, it just made me really proud of Indianapolis and central Indiana and what they’ve done,” Dungy added.

And the love-fest hasn’t stopped with NBC or its various platforms. Watching the Tampa NBC affiliate on Thursday evening, I saw a story on the hazards of buying counterfeit NFL merchandise, sparked by an announcement made in Indianapolis about 42,000 items seized across the country, localized with interviews from a local government official and a store owner who sells official merchandise.

There was, of course, no information on whether any counterfeit merchandise was seized in Tampa. And statements by government officials that fake NFL gear might be made with dyes or materials which could cause rashes was passed along with no challenge by the reporter.

What the report really did, was urge the viewer to reinforce the NFL’s copyrights, pushing fans to avoid cheaper, knockoff shirts and hats to keep the league’s merchandising profits strong.

I much prefer the story Jonnelle Marte told on Smartmoney.com Monday, highlighting the 10 things you’ll probably never see the NFL or a Super Bowl partner discuss before the game.

Marte’s list included the high price of attending the game (tickets priced at $4,000 or higher and plane tickets reaching $2,000); the criminals drawn by such big events, including scalpers and prostitutes; the $10 billion wagered on the game this year and the reality that projections of local profits from such events often are overblown or unproven.

To be sure, there’s lots I can’t wait to see Sunday, from Matt Lauer’s interview with President Obama (I happen to think the “Today” show host is TV’s most underrated interviewer) to a feature story on New York Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka, a kid who grew up in Indianapolis, but whose grandfather was the first prime minister of Uganda.

But it would be nice if, in the middle of all the overhyped, overblown pageantry, some corner of NBC News or NBC Sports took a little time to cast a skeptical eye at the biggest sports game in the world.

(NBC Sports Network’s “Costas Tonight: Live From the Super Bowl” town hall discussion Thursday in Indianapolis, featuring talk about concussions with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and ex-players suing the NFL, was a wonderful start).

Because, in the end, we need more than images of a great celebration from the broadcasters bringing us the Big Game.

We need honesty and substance, so that we can trust everything we see onscreen.