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.

Among the more than 100 million people expected to watch the Feb. 5 Super Bowl, about 60 percent are expected to also be watching a second screen: iPad, smartphone, iPod Touch or some other kind of tablet computer.

That number is the lead argument cited by the good folks at Coca-Cola for a massive advertising campaign stretching their promotional message across the television and onto all those other secondary screens.

Under the Coca-Cola plan, the company’s popular animated polar bears will return for a series of ads showing two of them checking out the big game in their Artic home, each one adorned in mufflers emblazoned with the colors of one team playing.

Surf to the website CokePolarBowl.com during the game, and you can watch the bears react to the game in real-time, leading into commercials planned for the 1^st quarter, 3^rd quarter and post-game (the best one features one of the bears trudging out in the desolate wilderness, letting out a scream of frustration; depending on who loses, the bear with the appropriate muffler will take the long walk).

A team of writers will craft responses to fans from the bears over Twitter and Facebook. Fans can use an app on Facebook to send cheering or mourning polar bears to their friends, depending on which team they supported.

During a painfully awkward webcast rolling out the whole concept Thursday, one company executive enthused that it will be “as if the bears were sitting in the room with you.”

And I say, no thank you.

Social media has become an increasing part of big media events these days, as all of us grow more tethered to the tiny devices that wrangle our emails, text messages and online communication.

But there are very specific purposes to those communications. When Billy Cundiff missed a 32-yard field goal to lose the AFC Championship for the Ravens, I wanted immediate access to stats proving what a massive error that was and a clip for emailing to all my friends living within a 100-mile radius of Baltimore.

You know, for their information.

What I didn’t want to know was how the Coca-Cola polar bears reacted to the loss or if they had something snarky to say about the Pepsi commercial which aired two seconds after the blown field goal.

The hype about social media leading up to the Big Game feels even more massive than last year – and that was the game that was supposed to be the Social Media Super Bowl (what it really was: an excuse for advertisers to stick Twitter hash tags and Facebook addresses on the end of their $3-million, 30-second ad spaces).

According to Twitter’s own stats, the final minutes of last year’s Super Bowl produced 4,064 tweets per second – the highest rate for any sporting event.

Already, the host committee in Indianapolis has created a 2,800-square-foot Social Media Center, staffed by dozens of people in 15-hour shifts, this facility will be an information hub for the 150,000 people expected to descend on the city, scanning online platforms for questions to answer and information to pass along.

And that, dear reader, is what social media connected to this game really should do: tell me something I didn’t know or help me connect with people outside my personal space in cool, new ways.

But figuring out how to do that in ways that add to an already overstuffed TV experience is difficult. Chevrolet has a Game Day app for smartphones which offers access to YouTube videos of their advertising contest, a ticker with tweets featuring the game day hash tag, discounts on pizza and NFL merchandise and a chance to win one of 20 cars by spotting license plates in a Super Bowl ad.

It all sounds amazingly ahead of the curve in theory. But I have a hard time imagining I will be interested in checking out a YouTube video of a commercial which may never air in the game while the Patriots and Giants fight for football’s most important title.

Too much of the social media plans revealed so far feel like excellent advertisements for brands which do little or nothing to extend the uses I might put to social media for the big game.

For me, social media is about new connections, new information and new experiences.

And so, fun as it is to see the Coca-Cola polar bears agonizing over a last-second field goal kick, I have a feeling I’ll be too busy actually experiencing the game to see what that looks like in real time.

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.

Boxing fans will know Roach as the trainer for superstar boxers Manny Pacquiao, Oscar de La Hoya and loads of other champions. One of the best-known trainers in the sport, he’s also legendary for another reason: he succeeds despite struggling with the effects of Parkinson’s disease, likely brought on from his own time in the ring.

HBO’s “On Freddie Roach” takes its name seriously, following the 51-year-old trainer with cameras so closely, we watch him brush his teeth and take a shower in one revealing sequence. The goal, it seems, is to plunge us into Roach’s world completely; kicking off with his work preparing light welterweight champion Amir Khan for a bout with Zab Judah.

But the series, directed by “Friday Night Lights” auteur Peter Berg, wastes no time with narration or exposition, on-screen graphics impart what little contextual information Berg deigns to dole out. (We learn, for example, that Roach’s detail-oriented personal assistant is also his ex-girlfriend; a necessary detail when they have a squabble over her attention to a BlackBerry during dinner.)

For knowledgeable fans, this approach is no problem. They don’t need to be told yet again about Roach’s remarkable story – ending a mediocre boxing career at age 26 only to find his real talent in observing and training fighters, helping star Mickey Rourke start his abbreviated boxing career before opening his popular Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles.

Still, this also makes the documentary difficult for novices to access. As someone who doesn’t follow boxing, I had a tough time with the first episode, which documents the days leading to Khan’s fight against Judah without really explaining its importance or the meaning of Roach’s training tips.

Thankfully, Berg’s series also skips the typical contrivances of modern-day “reality TV” shows. No funny music to tell you how to feel about a scene or contrived “confessional” segments manipulated by producers; just Roach’s ragged voice guiding you through his activities, as if you were perched inside his head looking out.

The series’ second episode, featuring Roach talking about an abusive father who was also a fighter, felt more like a proper start; showing Roach’s brother Pepper explaining how their father insisted the boys learn to fight and disregard school. He admits repeating the fourth grade several times before quitting school, with a laugh.

This second episode reveals much more about Roach and his unique story, starting with the beginning of his day in a nice home, giving his beautiful blonde girlfriend her morning coffee before sliding into a black Mercedes for the drive to his gym.

Once there, Roach enters a different world, moving a stack of old water bottles to park his car and entering a gym filled with aspiring champs and never-will-make-it fighters, each grasping for a shot at whatever success might be possible with Roach’s help.

The most telling moment comes when Pepper has an episode, slurring his speech and acting erratically in ways that indicate he might be having a stroke. Roach doesn’t rush to his brother’s side; instead, he sends an assistant, who immediately calls 911.

Family members fret and Pepper is carted off in an ambulance. Roach cries a little in his office and then pulls on his training gloves, stepping into the ring to school another fighter on the details of the sweet science.

As Berg’s cameras hover, we see Roach heads home that day late at night, seemingly alone, popping a DVD into his laptop at the day’s end to look over the workout he led hours earlier.

Did he check on his brother’s progress? Did he think about visiting him in hospital? Has his brother suffered any lasting damage following what seemed like a stroke?

(Viewers never even find out for sure if that is the final diagnosis, but boxing fans will know that Pepper did indeed have a stroke last July.)

All those questions go unanswered, as viewers are left to assume the events Berg reveals leave out nothing important.

More importantly, the audience is left to make its own conclusions about a man who seems more devoted to dissecting fighters than anything – including his own brother’s health.

And, perhaps, that’s the fairest portrait for which anyone could ask.

“On Freddie Roach” debuts at 9:30 p.m. Friday on HBO.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduatYe of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.

And that makes Jim Rome’s decision to vacate his perch on EPSN for a suite of platforms owned by CBS so intriguing. Because the Eye Network seems bent on making its impact in the world of sports media by bringing a big name to their playground, using his brand to boost recognition of theirs.

Under the plans announced Wednesday, he debuts a new show, “Rome,” April 3 on the CBS Sports Network, a cable channel focused on college sports up to now. Later this year, he’ll be featured in an interview series on Showtime, while also helping with the network’s coverage of football, college basketball and tennis, among other areas.

“We’ve been in expansion mode in Showtime sports, but we haven’t had the defining personality,” Showtime entertainment head David Nevins told the trade magazine Variety. “And I felt like our scripted shows, our dramas and our comedies are defined with particularly interesting personalities, but we’ve been looking to try to find that defining personality (in sports), and I think we’ve got a shot.”

Rumors had already been circulating that Rome was leaving ESPN late last year, not long after his “Jim Rome is Burning” show was moved to ESPN2 full time. So his departure for CBS feels like two brands uniting in need – a star needing a new platform united with a bunch of platforms in need of a star.

Already, Rome has his own media empire percolating, centered on his radio program “The Jim Rome Show,” syndicated to 244 stations across the country; according to CBS, that translates to two million daily listeners and 600,000 Twitter followers.

But it also raises questions for CBS’ newly acquired star. With a daily radio show already ongoing – which author James Andrew Miller reported on Twitter earns him $25-million to $30-million – can Rome find the time and energy to develop a half-hour daily show for the cable channel, a regular show (possibly monthly) on Showtime, and keep up his other jobs?

That may be the most important question for critics and fans, some of which have already dinged the star for recycling too much of his radio show in the ESPN program.

Still, the move instantly sends a signal to the sports world that CBS is getting serious about entering the arena with NBC/Comcast and ESPN – which have occupied lots of column inches on their own for their highly visible and growing competition as sports networks.

All this makes sense in a larger frame, as well. Sports has already emerged as one of the few subjects which can still draw masses of viewers to television, especially on the broadcast networks. (For proof, simply look at NBC; the biggest reason the fourth-place network still has a pulse is “Sunday Night Football,” which remains the most-watched program in primetime during football season.)

NBC has its foot in the game with its newly rebranded NBC Sports Network and ABC/Disney virtually owns the genre with ESPN’s suite of platforms and products. With Fox’s moves into ultimate fighting, CBS needed its own sports-related game-changer to beef up its network of properties.

Small wonder then, that Miller noted on Twitter CBS president Les Moonves joined CBS Sports president Sean McManus in pulling together the deal.

Critics joke that the CBS Sports Network has signed deals with Major League Lacrosse, the National Lacrosse League and Professional Bull Riders. And it’s been through a host of name changes, kicking off as the National College Sports Network, later becoming College Sports Television before its transformation as CBS Sports Network.

There is little doubt CBS will need to offer more than a high-priced star to draw sports fans. Even as NBC Sports Network has to shake off its’ history as a home for shows left over from its past life as the Outdoor Life Network, Rome’s new employer needs better marquee attractions than bull riding and games featuring the United State Military Academy.

And one guy, obviously, can’t do it all.

But the ultimate winner here just might be the fans, who get to see another company with deep pockets and broad ambitions working hard to corner the sports media market in its own way.

Like so many watching this historic adjustment in the sports media universe unfold, I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduatYe of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.

Yeah, I can’t believe how dumb I was 12 months ago, either.

Strike that. My predictions a year ago on what sports media might bring in 2011 weren’t about a lack of intellect; they were just a hopeful anticipation of the coolest stuff that might actually take place over the next dozen months.

Unfortunately, reality proved a bit tougher. We got Jerry Sandusky, billion-dollar NFL deals and athletes gone wild on Twitter. Lots to write about, but much less to cheer.

So that may explain why my roster of stories to watch in 2012 is a bit more sober – some might even say cynical – and hardheaded. Because the road ahead for sports media looks more challenging and filled with opportunity than ever, regardless of how the realities of life might intrude.

Here’s my list of issues/trends to watch in 2012 for sports media:

More coverage of sports-connected sex abuse: News that hastily retired Philadelphia Daily News sports columnist Bill Conlin had joined Sandusky and ex-Syracuse University assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine in the ranks of accused child molesters left sport fans scratching heads. Time for journalists to look hard at sports culture and try figuring out whether this is symptom of a larger problem – like a tendency to deify successful sports figures in a way which enables abusers – or whether we’re seeing a drive toward more disclosure of sexual crimes in everyday society, also reflected in the athletic world. The grief handed to ESPN and the Syracuse Post-Standard for moving slowly on the Fine story should signal smart sports newsrooms; it’s also time to dig through old tips and make sure they weren’t unfairly overlooked.

NBC Sports Network vs. ESPN: Sure, right now the rebranding effort of Comcast’s Versus sports channel as NBC Sports Network looks super lame; no way to take a broadcast day filled with fishing and hunting shows and make it look cool, no matter what name you slap on the channel. But rebuilding a cable channel is a long-term game, so it will be interesting to watch cable giant Comcast challenge one of the biggest channels in cable television. Right now, the contest looks like Mike Tyson versus Ed Helms; ESPN has “SportsCenter,” cracking opinions shows, college football and the NFL. NBCSN reaches 75 percent of the TV households its rival connects to, with some series left over from when it was called the Outdoor Life Network. But competition usually works to fans’ advantage, so I’m looking forward to how the geniuses at Comcast/NBC will take it to the Worldwide Leader over the next 12 months.

Impact of pricey new broadcast contracts on reporting: ESPN has resisted the implications of a column by John Canzano at the Oregonian that the channel unfairly excluded rival press from Rose Bowl coverage and has offered coverage of college football intended to pump up the games. But there is no denying the suspicion among fans, journalists and even some coaches that outlets’ sizable rights deals with sports leagues may distort coverage or the games themselves. New York Rangers coach John Tortorella implied NBC might have colluded with referees to produce unfair calls to push their Winter Classic game with the Philadelphia Flyers into overtime (he later apologized and earned a $30,000 fine). That complaint was roundly criticized by an analyst on – where else – the NBC Sports Network’s new “Sports Talk” show. Expect more folks to look more closely at how channels cover, as journalists, events they also have a huge financial stake in as entertainment providers.

Social media’s impact on reporting: This week, sports fans got a close up example of how journalists are still struggling with Twitter, as a host of outlets reported new coach Urban Myer had banned Ohio State University football players from using the online messaging service. Turns out, others said the ban wasn’t true – some players may have misunderstood the situation and sent out misleading tweets – but that fact wasn’t clear until legions of outlets had reported it is fact and railed against the decision. It was bad enough that many sports media sources reported the ban as fact without comment from the college or players, using their Twitter messages as proof. But there were too many stories that didn’t reveal the source of their information, making their reports look more authoritative than they were. Silly journalists. If social media teaches us anything, it’s that transparency is key. If a report is based on a Twitter post – or your perusal of another website’s reporting on a Twitter post – best to say so. That way, if the situation changes, you might get a little less egg on your face.

Reaching new audiences: The biggest question for TV outlets broadcasting football now is pretty simple: How do you improve on the best ratings ever? The problem is one more television providers wish they had, but when you’re on top, there is often nowhere to go but down. Last year’s Super Bowl was the most watched program ever on television and NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” finished this season as the most-watched show in primetime TV (conveniently ending before the top-rated show in most years, “American Idol,” starts its run in mid-January). News from ESPN’s Poynter Review Project that the Worldwide Leader is brainstorming how to attract female sports fans is hopeful. Because without new fans coming from somewhere, it’s hard to imagine how outlets will pay for those massive rights deals just cut with the NFL.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduatYe of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.

A fee hike of 50 percent across three networks. A nine-year commitment. A total $3 billion in fees ($6 billion if you factor in ESPN and DirecTV). Each year.

The numbers, even for a sport used to dominating America’s attention and pocketbooks, must have sent a few team owners into heart palpitations.

But it is easy to see why the big networks are opening their pocketbooks. Earlier this year, at a time when network TV viewership seems to shrink annually, the Super Bowl set a new all-time record for any television broadcast – the one place left where we all seem to congregate and recreate the small-screen-as-national-hearth ideal that once was commonplace.

As we all fragment into our own personalized networks of video-sharing sites, iPad apps and cable TV channels, that hearth becomes a more potent economic force than ever. Just ask the executives at NBC, where its lackluster new shows and fading veteran series have left Sunday Night Football telecasts as one of its very few bright spots on a bleak programming lineup.

But with this success comes unexpected impact. And there is no way TV outlets can pony up a record $6 billion for football without a few unintended consequences for those of us who merely sit and watch the games.

1) Higher cable and satellite TV fees – Expect every TV outlet involved in these deals to eventually pass along the higher fees to viewers. And it won’t just be the cable and satellite companies.

TV networks now charge cable systems to pass along their signals – reasoning that one big enticement pushing customers to cable is accessing DTV-clear broadcasts of American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. Every year, we have one cable system or another threatening to drop a suite of channels connected to a network broadcaster, mostly because these retransmission fees keep rising (believe it or don’t, the networks once paid cable systems to broadcast their shows).

Expect those fights to escalate, as networks pass more of that NFL bite along to cable systems, who will fight and claw and threaten and eventually go along, passing the charges along further to the last person on the chain: the cable and satellite subscriber.

2) Even less wiggle room on blackout policies – Here in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, viewers have been especially victimized by the NFL’s stringent policies preventing local TV stations from telecasting home games which are not sold out. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been disappointing fans week after week; last year, every home game was blacked out to viewers, this year, just two of seven home games have been telecast.

I have long argued that such rules make little sense in Florida, where the double whammy of a disappointing team and a persistent economic slump have made it hard for fans to spend big bucks on tickets to games they know the home team stands a good chance of losing (they just got blown out by Jacksonville, after all!).

But with the weight of that $6 billion in fees filling the NFL’s pockets, expect no mercy on the blackout front. The owners and athletes already have their TV money, so why shouldn’t they safeguard the special status of their product by ensuring no one sees it for free until every ticket in the house is bought by someone (or some company)?

3) More pressure to gloss over problems in sports coverage — As my fellow columnist Michael Bradley has already pointed out, any network which shells out close to $1 billion annually for football games is not going to want its journalistic arms breaking stories detracting from the success of the league or the broadcasts. Which means ESPN, the new Comcast-developed NBC Sports Network, CBS and Fox will have a mighty incentive to avoid all but the most obvious and inescapable negative stories.

When I first began writing columns in this space two years ago, my first real piece was about NBC’s inaugural broadcast from the Dallas Cowboy’s $1.2-billion stadium in Arlington, Texas. It was a grand space, almost as long as the Empire State building is high, filled with a record-size crowd for an NFL game.

But the stadium also cost twice the original estimates; locals reportedly paid more than $933 million — a total that includes interest on bonds the city took out to fund its contributions. Local taxes went up, while the stadium charged $40 for parking and $60 for a 20-inch pizza, according to local news reports.

And to make the NFL regular-season attendance record that night, they sold 30,000 fans $29, standing-room-only tickets.

Little of this showed up in NBC’s coverage, which was mostly about backslapping Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and spreading reports to other network properties such as the Today show and Access Hollywood.

You can make the argument that such talk might not belong in actual game coverage. But when $1 billion is on the line, you can’t be surprised if people outside the sports entertainment department get roped into playing along.

4) Increasing commercialization of the sport – Besides hiking fees to cable outlets, the other way broadcasters will earn back the fees they’re paying is by exploiting the games themselves for as much as they can.

That means loads of ancillary shows packed with as much advertising as possible (ESPN’s new deal for Monday Night Football, extending the show to 2021, included 500 additional hours of programming). That means tie-in deals for whatever products can be wrapped around the action on the field, before and after. That also means higher fees for the commercials themselves to companies such as McDonald’s, Ford and Anheuser-Busch (guess who eventually pays for that, too, in higher prices for Happy Meals and Explorers?).

Cool as it is to see a sport succeed as the heartbeat of American culture, it is sad and a bit worrisome to see the commercial exploitation that follows.

Because, stood next to the billions in fees and revenues on the table, the fans’ love for the game seems like a small thing, indeed.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduatYe of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.

Still, barring another unfortunate car crash from Tiger Woods, what else could come down in the next 22 days to rival what we’ve seen in the last few weeks?

From retired Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky’s arrest last month on child molestation charges — and a second arrest Wednesday on new charges from new accusers — to the revelation of an audiotape which may confirm similar allegations against now-fired Syracuse University assistant coach Bernie Fine, the worst sorts of headlines have filled sports media as 2011 closes out.

But if last year’s biggest sports media stories were about the triumph of gossip – think Woods and the nude cellphone photo alleged to show superstar QB Brett Favre in the altogether – then 2011’s sports media blockbusters focused on more serious subjects.

This year’s most compelling stories outlined long-hidden allegations, which may have been suppressed by the sports establishment and our own squeamishness about sex crimes. Others were about the realignment of sports media at its greatest heights, as the biggest names in the business reconfigure themselves for a modern media universe.

As usual, they all involve a potent mix of money, sex, technology and social issues – all wrapped around coverage of something that is supposed to be simple entertainment.

Welcome to the world of the modern media critic. Here’s my list for 2011:

1. Jerry Sandusky and Bernie Fine. Hard as it is to believe, these stories are about more than allegations of molestation reaching back more than a decade, suspicions that university officials or other adults may have turned a blind eye and the bitter end of longtime Penn State coach Joe Paterno’s storied career. It’s also about a modern media audience’s willingness to discuss sex crimes in the public space and eager desire to break down the social barriers, which may keep victims from speaking up.

It’s also about media outlets caught in the middle, as ESPN and the Syracuse Post-Standard now scramble to explain sitting on an audio tape for years which may have confirmed that Fine’s wife knew of the alleged molestation. Or national media originally painting Paterno as a hero when Sandusky was first arrested, before considering facts indicating he and the college (and even prosecutors) may have moved too slowly to examine allegations against a possible child predator. These stories wrap journalism and social challenges into one potent package.

2. ESPN versus NBC Sports. We all knew that cable giant Comcast taking control of NBC would likely mean a serious challenge to the Worldwide Leader’s dominance of sports media. When Comcast/NBC changes the Versus cable channel’s name to the NBC Sports Network in January, the move will be an outward acknowledgement of a rivalry which has already raged for much of 2011. That competition has played out in a battle over rights and innovative plans for getting more sports on air. From NBC’s $4.3 billion Olympics deal to ESPN’s snatching up Wimbeldon after 43 years on the Peacock Network, the fighting between these two giants will push more dollars into the pockets of sports organizations, while jacking up the price of cable bills for everyone.

3. ESPN lurches toward ethics. Critics have had big fun over the years lampooning ESPN’s difficulty in upholding a consistent standard of journalism ethics, especially when its business interests conflicted. But top leaders at the sports media behemoth announced in early 2011 that would change, hiring analysts from the Poynter Institute to serve as ombudsmen and developing a relatively public set of endorsement guidelines for star personalities. There have been hiccups – even Poynter called ESPN’s early coverage of Penn State’s issues “slow” and “spotty” – but it beats the days when executives acted as if ethics were concerns for other, lesser media beings.

4. Twitter proves boon and bane for athletes and journalists. Yes, there’s the football star who got in trouble for suggesting on Twitter there might be another side to the arguments for Osama bin Laden’s death. And who could forget the Philadelphia sports writers who got physical after trading barbs through the online messaging service? But Twitter just as often gives us a peek behind the mask of press conference and official statements, with flashes of how athletes and executives really feel. Of course, sometimes they’re feeling great about shopping at the mall or picking up groupies, but that’s the chance you take when you look behind the facade.

5. Media support for sports’ “gayest month ever” in 2011. There were so many gay-focused sports stories this spring, that Outsports.com called several weeks in April and May the “gayest month ever.” During that time, sports radio host Jared Max, Phoenix Suns CEO Rick Welts, pro bowler Scott Norton and former Villanova university basketball star Will Sheridan came out or talked publicly about life as gay men. In addition, anti-gay slurs slung by basketball star Kobe Bryant and Atlanta Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell were met with criticism and rejection. Most importantly, these events sparked sensitive, supportive coverage from sports media outlets. It’s an important moment for a sports culture that has often hesitated to match the general public’s acceptance of gay people.

6. Grantland website debuts as home to great sports writing. In a world of 140-character news scoops and snarky blog items, it takes some stones to start a sports website devoted to well-crafted long form pieces which sometimes have little to do with athletics or competition at all. Some may quibble about the site’s quirky aesthetic, but with a roster of contributors including Charles Pierce, Dave Eggers, Malcolm Gladwell and founder Bill Simmons, ESPN’s Grantland remains an oasis of deep thought in a sea of superficial, sports-related media chatter.

7. ESPN tell-all book debuts. Authors Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller would likely argue their 745-page oral history of ESPN, Those Guys Have All the Fun, isn’t a tell-all book in the classic sense. There is no attempt to muckrake, though the authors broach lots of controversies, from the persistent questions about sexual harassment at the male-dominated company, to friction with celebrated SportsCenter anchors Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick, the company’s aversion to coming down hard on established sports institutions, and the viral video spread of sideline reporter Erin Andrews nude in a hotel room. But the authors also try to tell the story of how sports media’s biggest institution came to be, a tale related in the words of more than 500 sources who lived it firsthand.

8. Football’s surging popularity makes media and fans pay dearly. As football games continue racking up record viewership totals – February’s Super Bowl telecast was the most watched program in TV history with an average 111-million viewers – deals for rights for future telecasts have gone through the roof (ESPN alone paid $15-billion for the next eight years of Monday Night Football). Eventually, that translates into higher cable fees and hardball decisions on blackout policies, ironically making it tougher for everyone to access a sport that is expanding its audience.

9. All NCAA tournament games are telecast for the first time. In our super-connected world, its surprising that it took this long for the TV industry to get every moment from the popular March Madness tournament on a screen. But CBS and Turner Broadcasting’s move to put every championship game on TV – with handy onscreen information on what game was playing where to air in channel surfing – felt uniquely modern, especially paired with their sophisticated iPhone/iPod/iPad app.

10. ESPN dumps Hank Williams Jr. from Monday Night Football after he compares Barack Obama to Hitler on Fox News. This move came about 10 years too late.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduatYe of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.

Nowhere is that notion more obvious and troubling than in the reaction to press coverage of the scandal enveloping former Syracuse associate head basketball coach Bernie Fine, who was fired after 35 years there when three men came forward to accuse him of molesting them as children.

The problem: Two journalism organizations, ESPN and the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper, heard allegations eight years ago from one of the men. That man, former Syracuse University ball boy Bobby Davis, also gave them a tape of a telephone conversation with the accused coach’s wife, Laurie Fine, in which she seemed to confirm knowledge of the alleged crimes.

Given the results at hand — a police investigation, Fine’s firing, a school investigation and concern over the possibility that a child predator had years to find new victims — pointed questions arise.

Why did it take so many years for this story to surface – amid media frenzy over similar charges involving a former football coach at Penn State University? Could media outlets have done more to break this story when nobody knew about it but them and Syracuse police?

What is obvious: We have entered a media moment where the public is more passionate than ever about dismantling the issues preventing potential victims from discussing and dissecting allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

From journalists covering news right now in the Middle East to women who had contact with presidential candidate Herman Cain years ago, stories about sexual crimes and misconduct have gained increasing visibility, with a special focus placed on overcoming the societal pressures which may have kept victims silent in the past.

When CBS News correspondent Lara Logan spoke up about her sexual assault by a crowd of men in Egypt earlier this year, she said an important reason for coming forward was inspiring other victims to tell their own stories.

So as Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy spoke up with her story of being sexually assaulted while covering protests in Egypt last month, the world was primed to pay attention.

Similarly, a woman alleging a long-term affair with married GOP candidate Cain (who has since suspended his campaign) said she went public after seeing how the former Godfather’s Pizza executive dismissed women who spoke of sexual harassment issues with him in the past.

Both the Post-Standard and ESPN now say a key reason for publishing stories on the allegations against Fine now, is that a second man, Davis’ stepbrother Mike Lang, reversed denials from years ago and now says he was also molested by the ex-coach.

At first, Syracuse University head basketball coach Jim Boeheim said the changed story was about somehow cashing in on the media mania following molestation accusations at Penn State.

“It is a bunch of a thousand lies he has told,” Boeheim said to ESPN for its Nov. 17 story, a comment the coach has since said he regrets making.

News organizations are stuck with an uncomfortable question: How to push hard to break any code of silence without sparking a witch-hunt?

The answer here, it seems, comes down to the tape.

More specifically, concern centers on an audiotape made by Davis, the accuser who first came forward to ESPN, the Post-Standard and Syracuse police more than eight years ago.

In it, Mrs. Fine makes statements indicating she may have known about the molestation of Davis, who also says she slept with him. “I know everything that went on, you know,” Mrs. Fine says at one point in the tape, recorded in October 2002, according to ESPN.  Later, she notes “It’s about the d—. I know that.”

In an editorial published Thursday by USA Today, Syracuse University chancellor Nancy Cantor said the contents of the tape would have been enough to fire Fine the moment officials heard it.

“When the tape emerged for the first time (Sunday), we fired Fine,” Cantor wrote. “Those who held onto the tape for nearly 10 years owe everyone an explanation.”

The explanation, said ESPN officials, was that, until recently, they had one accuser with an unverified tape. “We had never been able to confirm that it was Laurie Fine,” ESPN vice president and director of news Vince Doria said in an interview ESPN published Monday. “Part of it was, we had no independent video of her and her voice.”

But ESPN eventually found a sample of her voice online and used an expert to confirm her voice on the tape, publishing its story on the tape Sunday, 10 days after its initial revelations about the allegations against Fine.

The Post-Standard used a more direct method to confirm Mrs. Fine’s voice. It asked her back when the tape was made.

In a column published Thursday, Post-Standard executive editor Michael J. Connor said Davis recorded Mrs. Fine with the newspaper’s knowledge, after learning the newspaper thought an admission from her might be enough to publish a story.

“She admitted to phone conversations with Davis, confirmed portions of the tape were accurate, suggested the tape had been doctored and cut off further contact with us,” Connor wrote, noting the newspaper concluded she did not conclusively admit to knowledge of any specific molestation incident.

“Think back to 2003,” the executive editor continued, “before a second and third accuser, before a massive search and the firing of Fine and ask yourself: is there enough proof here to ruin a person’s life?”

Before the stories from Egypt and University Park, Pa., the world might have said no. But in today’s climate, commentators ask why the newspaper didn’t analyze the tape itself and ask for a response from the college, which officials said would have resulted in Fine’s firing eight years earlier.

In other words, why didn’t they push harder?

Regardless of the answer, there is little doubt journalists now face added pressure to publish or pursue every investigative option in the face of such allegations — if only to make sure that, if a story does surface, they can say without equivocation they did everything possible.

We usually know what the company wants us to think it means. That comes courtesy of official statements or press conferences, with talking points lawyered within an inch of their lives and scrubbed of much that is useful.

In the case of John Skipper’s elevation to president of the Worldwide Leader and co-chair of Disney Media Networks – with current president George Bodenheimer promoted to the newly created transition job of executive chairman – the change is presented as something Bodenheimer wanted.

“I’ve been with ESPN 31 years — my entire professional career. Constant change and consistent growth have marked each of those years, and to me those two themes underscore today’s news,” Bodenheimer said in a statement. “After 13 years as president, I felt it was a good time to step away from the day to day management of ESPN and let others take the lead. I very much appreciate Bob’s support over the years, and look forward to my future role with ESPN.”

Since Bodenheimer, Skipper and Walt Disney Company president Bob Iger aren’t yet talking with the press – even the sports network they lead, ironically – we haven’t heard their answers to all the questions raised by this transition, announced during a holiday week when many journalists are off work and news audiences are gearing up for Turkey Day.

What we do know is that Iger has already set his departure date from Disney’s president and CEO job for 2015, kicking off serious speculation as to who would succeed him in running one of the world’s largest media companies.

Skipper’s elevation puts him in a good position to be one of those candidates, elevated to lead the sprawling company’s most profitable division in a job that makes him co-chair of Disney Media Networks alongside Anne Sweeney.

Sweeney, who oversees the company’s non-sports entertainment platforms such as the ABC Network, ABC Family cable channel and the Disney Channel, was widely considered a top contender to replace Iger when news of his departure was made public.

In contrast, Bodenheimer moves up to an executive job which will take him out of overseeing the day-to-day operations of ESPN at a time when executives will be working overtime to prove they deserve Iger’s job.

Bodenheimer is an ESPN institution, starting work at the Bristol, Conn. headquarters more than 30 years ago as a driver ferrying Fed Ex packages and staff back and forth from the airport, rising to become its top executive in an ultimate example of promotion from within.

But that classic ESPN culture has taken a beating in recent years, with recent controversies over the endorsements allowed celebrities such as Erin Andrews, coverage decisions regarding big names such as Ben Roethlisberger and an exhaustive book which detailed, among many other things, allegations of sexual harassment at the company’s isolated headquarters.

That book, Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller’s Those Guys Have all the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, also detailed how Bodenheimer secured the channel’s lucrative future, negotiating deals with cable providers which increase their fees 20 percent each year for the life of the agreement.

“What George Bodenheimer did then is the most important thing done in broadcasting since Bill Paley stole all of NBC’s stars,” said former ABC chief executive officer Michael Eisner in one telling quote from the book.

But ESPN is entering a new media world where such cable deals are not necessarily its entire future. Now, other promising portions on the Worldwide Leader’s plate belong to its online and mobile technology profiles, with the key to any modern media company found in the millions who access its content across these relatively new areas.

ESPN also faces a new challenge from a Comcast-led NBC, which is quite obviously welding its new plethora of sports platforms into a sizable competitor.

Back in June, NBC sealed a $4.3-million deal for the next four Olympic Games across its many cable and broadcast channels, just after losing old school network TV sports head Dick Ebersol in favor of cable-savvy NBC Sports Group leader Mark Lazarus.

And Comcast’s sports channel Versus changes its name to NBC Sports Network on Jan. 2 – one day after Bodenheimer leaves his old ESPN job and Skipper officially becomes, well, the skipper.

For a company that has struggled through so many well-publicized executive transition crises, the Bodenheimer/Skipper handoff looks to be a smooth one. Bodenheimer took a chance on Skipper, hiring the longtime print executive to his first TV job as executive vice president of content for ESPN in 2005, positioning Skipper for his current gig.

For an organization that prides itself on creative conflict and leaps forward through smartly aggressive change, it seems a good move for the start of a new year filled with amped-up competition and new challenges.

Even if that’s what ESPN kinda wants us to think, anyway.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduatYe of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.

On one side is NBC Sports anchor Bob Costas, who learned 15 minutes before a planned interview with Sandusky’s lawyer Monday, that the ex-coach himself was willing to speak by telephone on grand jury charges he sexually assaulted eight boys over a 15-year period.

On the other is CBS News correspondent Armen Keteyian, who on Tuesday tracked down Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary, known as the man who told the grand jury he saw Sandusky having sex with a 10-year-old in 2002. The interview, which consisted of about 25-seconds in which McQueary admitted his emotions felt “crazy” in the maelstrom of the scandal, was hyped by CBS as an illuminating, exclusive interview.

This is the ugly, sausage-making part of news coverage as organizations struggle, with more transparency than ever before, to track down all the threads unleashed by a three-year investigation into charges a 32-year veteran of Penn State’s legendary, ethical football program had sex with several young men for years. And that top university officials may have known.

Costas’ interview, aired Monday on NBC’s Rock Center, featured direct questions, asked with a minimum of emotion, getting at the heart of the issues most viewers likely cared about. One question – “Are you sexually attracted to young boys?” – was reportedly an in-the-moment idea, which left Sandusky looking awful as he floundered to answer for long seconds.

Keteyian has defended the handling of his interview, in which McQueary said his emotions were swirling “like a snow globe.” But the talk essentially boiled down to little more than an extended refusal to comment with the controversial assistant coach offering no new facts on the situation.

The pressure for new information here is mounting. As reporters dissect an email McQueary sent to a friend contradicting the parts of his grand jury testimony made public – it says he somehow stopped the assault on the boy and talked to police about it; police say they had no record of a discussion with him – there is a growing desire to learn what he knew and what he told Penn State officials back in 2002.

What TV can do best is bring the weight of big media down, shaking loose the key people in big stories, so viewers can see for themselves what may lie at the heart of the matter. But there is great temptation to overhype small gains; a sure recipe for losing credibility and boosting cynicism on the reports to follow.

Which is why it is so important to read the work of Sara Ganim, a police reporter with the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. who seems to be everywhere on the exploding scandal.

Back in March, Ganim wrote a story for the newspaper detailing how a grand jury spent 18 months hearing testimony Sandusky may have “indecently assaulted” a 15-year-old boy at a high school where he worked as a volunteer in 2009. Because those allegations didn’t directly involve Penn State and the story didn’t explicitly detail the sexual nature of the allegation, the scoop may not have gotten much national attention. But it proved one of the best-known coaches from the school’s storied football program was getting serious attention from law enforcement. And since Sandusky’s arrest Nov. 5, her scoops have come fast and furiously.

The best stuff included an interview with the sister of one of Sandusky’s alleged victims – unidentified in the story – who attends Penn State, seething as fellow students make jokes about being “Sanduskied.”

Another story asked pointedly whether the investigation of Sandusky should have taken three years, noting just one state trooper was assigned to the case for the first 15 months.

And a recent story on McQueary’s email featured a new nugget: the viewing of a copy of the assistant coach’s handwritten statement, in which he didn’t mention contacting police or stopping the rape.

Ganim, a 24-year-old reporter, told the Miami Herald she worked hard to keep the alleged victims’ voices in mind and focused on the notion that “It’s not a football story. It’s a crime story.”

But it’s also obvious she has a strong network of hometown sources and a willingness to follow the facts wherever the story leads.

That’s not bad advice for the big boys in sport media, stuck playing catch-up on the biggest sports-related story of the year.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.