He was even more eager to discuss the college conference carousel, which is ramping up for another wild, nausea-inducing spin.

“Looks like it’s another summer of conference craziness,” he said.

You bet it is.

Last Friday brought the first rumblings that another shakeup was possible. Florida State, which has been a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference for almost 21 years, contracted a serious case of TV contract envy, and members of the school community began to look longingly at the Big 12 Conference, even though the ACC announced just last week a new deal with ESPN/ABC that would keep the league rolling in it through 2027.

Seems FSU’s proud football program ran a deficit of $2.4 million in 2011, largely because games against Duke and Wake Forest don’t fire up the tomahawk-chopping faithful the way visits from Miami do. Geography buffs will note that the Seminoles’ home of Tallahassee isn’t surrounded by populous areas and therefore requires some want-to by those wishing to reach there. Reports that the ACC’s new deal, which reportedly guarantees each member school $17.1 million a year, doesn’t vest fully until 2020, meaning the ‘Noles must tough out the rest of the decade in an unsavory financial condition.

A quick glance at the Big 12, which returned from the brink of dissolution with a fat deal that guarantees members $20 mil per, started Florida State boosters – and even Board chairman Andy Haggard – wondering whether a move might not be in order. That bit of speculation cranked up the rumor factory, and within a few hours, FSU and Clemson were headed to the Big 12, if the SEC didn’t get them first. That, of course, started a chain reaction that put Louisville, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Rutgers and even Notre Dame in play. Even though Florida State president Eric Barron issued a statement reiterating FSU’s commitment to the ACC and detailed the many impracticalities of the move ($20-25 million in exit fees, increased travel costs for other sports, etc.) he also listed a few positives of moving on (the ACC is primarily a basketball conference, the four North Carolina schools are favored over everyone else, recent additions Pitt and Syracuse are no longer gridiron powers, the new ACC contract doesn’t allow schools to retain third-tier game broadcast rights), allowing for more gossip and conjecture.

Once again, thanks to giant TV money and the continued desire of networks to fill their schedules with the only programming that is largely DVR-proof, the college landscape is threatened by realignment. By the time 2012 ends, we may have another giant restructuring of the major conferences, with shock waves reaching down to the rest of Division I. Pity poor Conference USA, which is meeting this week and trying to figure out a viable future. C-USA has turned to previously anonymous schools like Texas-San Antonio, North Texas and Charlotte to fill out its roster and is considering a merger with the Mountain West Conference to form a mid-major leviathan that creates something of an Island of Misfit Schools. And what about Boise State, which was gung-ho to join the Big East, time zones be damned, only to find out that when it finally arrives, the conference could be worse off than the MWC the Broncos left.

It’s a mess, and it’s time for the media to slow down its rumormongering and report responsibly and accurately. My conversation with the linebackers coach careened from topic to topic and contained plenty of juicy gossip. With FSU in play, might the SEC convince Florida to let the Seminoles join, while also strong-arming South Carolina into allowing Clemson in, thereby making the conference the first to 16 members? Could Notre Dame move to the Big 12, the better to hold onto its affiliation with NBC? And would an FSU/Clemson exodus force the ACC to invite Louisville and Cincinnati to join?

It’s fun to think about the possibilities but irresponsible to treat them as if they were guaranteed to happen. It’s hard to imagine that conference realignment is done, not with so many schools trying to solidify their situations. But playing up every single angle creates more uncertainty and even pushes schools out of their current homes. As Andy Staples wrote Monday on SI.com, “A conference’s perceived strength can hold it together until some influential person steps forward and publicly questions that strength.” Haggard’s comments Friday questioned the ACC’s strength, and that has created opportunity for FSU and other conferences to act.

As the media works to figure out whether a change is coming, its members should keep in mind that while recasting college sports’ hierarchy is undeniably fun, there are some victims, most notably the schools ultimately left behind and – more importantly – the athletes whose futures are affected by the pursuit of the almighty buck. It’s logical and completely possible that FSU will remain an ACC bulwark for another 20 years, coexisting happily with its brethren. Or, the Seminoles could move on, and chaos might reign. Whatever the case, the media owes it to the school and college sports as a whole to report on what is newsworthy and not on what is mere supposition.

Big is good in this state. Bigger is better still…

Football merely fronts the largesse. In the past three years, USA TODAY Sports’ annual analysis of college athletics finances shows, no college athletics program has out-earned or outspent the colossus that is Texas.

The Longhorns took in a little more than $150 million in 2010-11, the most recent year for which public schools’ filings with the NCAA are available. That outdistanced second-place Ohio State by $18.5 million. The ‘Horns’ outlay for football and 19 other varsity sports was $133.7 million, almost $11.5 million more than Ohio State put into its 36 teams.

Texas’ program is one of only 22 across Division I that operate in the black — it generated enough revenue to cover athletics expenses — an increasingly touchy issue in times of shrinking state allocations and economic stress in higher education. Moreover, the Longhorns kicked $6 million back to the school’s academic side a year ago. For five years, half of the take from their new statewide, 24-hour cable television venture, the Longhorn Network, is earmarked for academics.”

Click here to read the USA Today report in its entirety.

Not only are they the most popular NHL team on social media, they have figured out how to make money on social media.

The hockey club is the NHL leader in social media fans, as it approaches 1.5 million fans across its social media channels (mostly on Facebook with 1.27 million and Twitter with t 170,000). That’s a healthy increase from the 300,000 fans it had in 2010.

Running the club’s foray into new media is Jake Duhaime, social media manager of the Detroit Red Wings.  A broadcast journalism graduate who joined the team in 2010 after working as a writer, Duhaime has become a passionate believer in social media’s ability to reach new hockey fans.

Duhaime points out the Red Wings were the first NHL team to introduce the “Fan of the Day” concept during the 2010-11 season. Since its inception, the program has seen submissions from all 50 states and 20 countries. The Fan of the Day has also been used as a wedding proposal and a prom proposal.

“The NHL is far and away the league most with it when it comes to embracing social media,” Duhaime said.  “After lockout, the league didn’t have ESPN, so teams had to think outside of the box on how to reach their fans.”

NHL has done some smart things that other professional leagues have not done. The league has embraced YouTube and not zealously shut down hockey content on YouTube. They also have embraced bloggers, which Duhaime calls “the most passionate form of media that they have – and the most creative.”

Embracing that creativity has allowed the Red Wings to come up with some unique ways to marry advertisers and social media.  And along the way, make a little money.  The Red Wings have seen a 700% growth in sponsorship on social media.

Duhaime, who works within the team’s marketing department, has focused his social media campaigns on the younger fans. “Our social media fans skew younger and are more likely to be single-ticket game buyers,” Duhaime said.

Leveraging this knowledge, he came up with a Valentine’s Day promotion to target singles. Amway paid for 100 tickets and the Red Wings created a “Who’s Your Wingman” campaign. Single fans were selected based on short essays and their social media savvy. They all used the hashtag #amwaywingman to communicate before, during and after the event.

“It was a chance to do something fun for the singles,” Duhaime said. “And it was the first time we targeted a specific consumer group – instead of just giving away tickets.”

Because teams can learn so much about the makeup of their Facebook fans – thanks to Facebook’s robust analytics – it makes sense they can pair sponsors with specific demographics.

“What we are seeing from a lot of our clients is they are looking for something very specific, like women, 25-34,” Duhaime said. “Social media allows you to do this.”

As teams grow their social media fan base, more teams will follow the Red Wings’ lead. Social media can deliver the highly sought after younger demographics.  The key will be to create contests and giveaways the fans are interested in and not just another advertising vehicle.

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?

He talked about how with a few practices remaining in the spring session, the recently concussed Larimore had told Mora he was ready to return to action. He felt good. He felt ready. He wanted to be back on the field.

Mora was intractable. No chance, the coach said. It didn’t matter to him how Larimore felt. There was no reason to risk further trouble by exposing Larimore to another shot to the head. By sitting out the remainder of the spring, he would have more than three months to recover fully before practice started again in August.

“The interesting thing about concussions to me is that unlike other injuries, concussions are not visible,” Mora said. “If a guy sprains an ankle or hurts his shoulder or wrist, you can see the injury, and you can see the progress he’s making in rehab. When he’s done with the injury, you can see if he’s the same player. With head injuries, you can’t see what goes on.

“If treated properly, concussions can be like other injuries. They can heal. But after a while, there can be a point of no return. So much is unknown. Until researchers get a grasp on the thresholds, we’ll proceed with caution.”

No one had asked Mora specifically about concussions, but he felt the need to let reporters know his stance. He talked about how because such a small percentage of college football players makes it to the NFL, it was important for them to leave school “whole” and capable of functioning at high levels for the rest of their lives. That is a noble goal, even if the very nature of football lends itself to compromising players’ physical health.

It’s also one that must become the mantra for media covering the sport. It has become obvious that football is a sport that endangers the health and very lives of those who play it. Junior Seau’s suicide last week is the latest gruesome example of that. Anyone who watches the game and listens at all to his conscience can’t avoid feeling a little uneasy at the idea that players are providing entertainment at a huge cost. Twenty years or so ago, we marveled at the gnarled hands and creaking joints of players. That was small change stuff.

As more than 1,700 lawsuits by former players claiming to be irreparably damaged by head injuries sustained during their professional careers clog the court dockets across the country, we have been exposed to the true impact of football: Those who play it are risking their lives. Mora’s desire to make collegians “whole” when they leave campus is admirable, but concussions occur during NCAA practices and games, just as they do in the NFL.

It’s time for all media members to understand that football is an inherently violent, damaging game that can lead its veterans to early-onset dementia and other brain-related catastrophes. We must approach the game from a different angle and educate fans that the players for whom they cheer are putting themselves at great risk every week. We must agitate for significant change and understand that the NFL’s recent penalties against headhunting players and bounty-promising teams are designed to limit future legal exposure, not necessarily to protect the participants.

This week, CBSSports.com’s Mike Freeman wrote a column that addressed the very real concern that the NFL could be out of business in 10 years. That may sound ridiculous on the surface, since the league generates about $9 billion a year in revenue, but the cumulative effect of settlements in the lawsuits and the growing body of medical evidence that supports claims that pro football is too dangerous could chase sponsors and TV networks (and their money) away from the sport. Freeman quotes an anonymous owner, who says, “The league has lived through wars, and I believe it will live through this, but this is the biggest challenge we may ever face.”

If the NFL is truly concerned about its future – and more importantly, the future of its players – it must change the game. All hits with the head must be outlawed, from seemingly innocent collisions at the line of scrimmage to tackles in which defenders transform themselves into human ICBMs. Widen the field, too. Bigger, stronger, faster players are colliding on a layout that hasn’t been altered in more than 100 years.

Hit the grassroots. Start teaching children the proper way to tackle: head up, drive the shoulder, wrap the arms. And force teams to be even more careful with concussion care. Then establish a point of no return, at which players will be removed from competition permanently – but compensated for their sacrifices with lifetime health benefits and counseling whenever they need it.

Many want to use Seau’s death as a rallying point, and that’s great if proper momentum is generated. But we must continue to explore the dangers of football to its participants and educate fans on the consequences of such violence, the better to affect real change. If we don’t, future calamities might just be on our ink-stained hands.

Stephen A. Smith, a frequent guest on the show, will join ‘First Take’ fulltime. The first hour of the program will feature him and Skip Bayless debating the day’s sports headlines.

The second hour will have guest analysts — current and former athletes, celebrities — for more debate.

Jay Crawford will continue to serve as host.”

NBC Sports Network will show 6-10 football games, 6-10 men’s basketball games and as many as four men’s lacrosse games.

In addition, NBC Sports Network has the ability to sublicense games to other networks. Under the contract, NBCSN will air the annual football rivalry game between Harvard and Yale.”

Click here to read the full release.

On Friday, Game 3 of the Lakers/Nuggets series drew a 2.6 overnight rating on ESPN, down 24% from Lakers/Hornets Game 3 in the same window a year earlier (3.4), but up 13% from Mavericks/Spurs Game 3 in 2010 (2.3).

Earlier in the night, Hawks/Celtics Game 3 drew a 2.0 overnight rating — down 29% from Celtics/Knicks Game 3 last year (2.8), but up 11% from Celtics/Heat Game 3 in 2010 (1.8).

Over on ESPN2, Bulls/Sixers Game 3 drew a 0.9 overnight, down a tick from Magic/Hawks Game 3 last year (1.0), and down 18% from Nuggets/Jazz Game 3 in a later timeslot in 2010 (1.1).”

That was Victor Rojas’ final-out call Wednesday night on Fox Sports West of Weaver’s no-hitter over Minnesota. It’s a call that has already been replayed many times and will no doubt go down as one of the highlights of Rojas’ career.

The only problem? It wasn’t until after the ball had gone into Hunter’s glove that Rojas had dared to utter that Weaver, the Simi Valley High grad, was anywhere near a no-hitter.

Baseball, as most of us know, has a lot of superstitions regarding no-hitters in progress. Teammates in the dugout will rarely sit next to a pitcher who has a no-hitter going, nor will they mention it to him, lest they jinx it.

But it is ludicrous and even downright shameful for a broadcaster not to tell his listeners there is a no-hitter going.”

Click here to read Carlisle’s full column.