NBC to release Olympic Schedule soon

Five weeks from today the competition at the Beijing Olympics will have begun. Ladies soccer gets underway with six games on this day. So I exchanged emails with NBC Universal's Adam Freifeld today about the upcoming coverage.

Freifeld told me via email that the schedule is to be released in the next couple of days. For me that means the schedule will be released tomorrow, Thursday. Because last week, I heard that the schedule would be released this week. With that said, I don't think they'll release it on the Holiday on Friday, so I think we see it tomorrow. But it could have been delayed and we won't see it until next week.

Also contained within Freifeld's email was the information that some of the content available live on the internet will be the same content on NBC's cable coverage (USA, MSNBC, CNBC). He said that soccer would be one of the sports available for live viewing on the internet. I would expect that most of the other team sports, volleyball, basketball, baseball, field hockey, handball, softball would also be available live online. But again that is my speculation. We will find out more in the upcoming days. Freifeld did note that the online information would be released the same time the broadcast schedule is released.

One other media note.....Syracuse and Northwestern announced today that their season opening game will begin at noon on that Saturday and be broadcast on either ESPN or ESPN2. This concurs with our speculation the other week that the game would be on ESPN2. We're still banking on ESPN2 - and hoping for no Pam Ward - as East Carolina announced that its opener with Virginia Tech would be broadcast on ESPN at Noon. Of course, we wouldn't put it past the Pirate athletic department to have been confused during a conversation with someone.