Remember when 90 minutes was excessive for the Super Bowl pregame show? Then that stretched to three hours, four, five, eight just to make sure the taping of players' ankles was covered in its entirety.

Now ESPN has gone from the ridiculous to the sublime with "25 Hours of College Football" as a lead-in to Thursday's LSU-Mississippi State game to kick off the 2007 season.

The show will include six special editions of "College Football Live".

There will be coverage of a USC practice and pep rallies at Louisville, Florida State and Mississippi State. There will be a report from Virginia Tech as the team and fans prepare for the first football game since the April 16 on-campus shooting tragedy.

Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan and Warriors coach June Jones will be featured in a live phone interview set for midnight-2 a.m. Wednesday to Thursday.

There will be 10 round-table segments with ESPN analysts and a Notre Dame coaches round-table with (ugh) host Brent Musburger and former or current Irish leaders Ara Parseghian, Lou Holtz and Charlie Weis.

ESPN will use 17 people, including host Rece Davis, in 25 hours.

All this nonsense starts at 4 p.m. Wednesday and concludes just prior to kickoff at 5 p.m. Thursday.

Good luck with the overkill. And good viewing.

More college football

- ABC/ESPN will carry 141 college football games this season with 45 on ESPN, 35 on ESPN2, 33 on ESPNU, 22 on ABC and six on ESPN Classic. ESPN2 actually beats ESPN and its 25-hour hype to the punch with Tulsa and Louisiana-Monroe kicking off at 4 p.m. Thursday.

- ESPN's schedule includes a 14-game Thursday night package. The highlights include an Oct. 25 Boston College-Virginia Tech game and a Nov. 22 -- Thanksgiving night -- USC-Arizona contest.

- ABC gets the best games for its Saturday night series. That series includes Tennessee-California (Sept. 1), USC-Nebraska (Sept. 15), Notre Dame-UCLA (Oct.6), Ohio State-Penn State (Oct. 27) and the Big 12 Championship Game (Dec. 1).

- The ESPNU schedule has a few big-name teams, but mostly features colleges that don't normally get the national spotlight, including Texas Southern-Prairie View A&M, Arkansas Pine Bluff-Alcorn State, Texas Southern-Jackson State, Hampton-North Carolina A&T and Cornell-Princeton.

- CBS has 21 games on its college schedule with mostly Southeastern Conference teams.

- Versus has an 18-game schedule, including Brigham Young-UCLA on Sept. 8, UCLA-Utah (Sept. 15), Cincinnati-San Diego State (Sept. 29), Stanford-USC (Oct. 6) and California-Stanford (Dec. 1).

- The Mountain, the Mountain West Conference's weak effort at a network deal, has 30 games. San Diego State is on four times -- Sept. 22 vs. Portland State, Oct. 6 vs. Colorado State, Oct. 27 vs. BYU and Nov. 3 vs. Wyoming.

- CSTV has a 44-game schedule with the military academies in the spotlight, including Air Force-Navy (Sept. 29), Army-Air Force (Nov.3) and three other Navy games. San Diego State is featured twice -- Oct. 20 vs. New Mexico and Nov. 10 vs. Nevada-Las Vegas. CSTV also has the Utah-BYU game on Nov. 24.

Local notes

- Channel 8 sports reporter Jaymee Sire is working without a contract as she explores opportunities in Boston, New York and with Comcast.

- Saturday's Chargers-Cardinals game will be carried live on Channel 8 in San Diego and Channel 2 in L.A. The NFL Network also has live coverage. Channel 4 San Diego has a replay at 7 p.m. Monday. Ron Pitts and Billy Ray Smith have the call. If you're only going to watch one preseason game, this is the one. Usually, the third preseason game is the best.

- The Chargers also play Thursday at home against the 49ers. Channels 8 and 2 will have that contest with Pitts and Smith calling the action.

- Matt Vasgersian, TV voice of the Padres on Channel 4, is getting more work on Fox. Saturday, Vasgersian will call the Red Sox-White Sox game for Fox. Next Saturday, he has the Rangers-Angels game. On Sept. 9, he jumps into Fox's NFL pool, calling the Lions-Raiders game along with former El Camino High standout JC Pearson.

- "One on One with Jane Mitchell", featuring Tony Gwynn from the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, will air Thursday following the Diamondbacks-Padres game.

Gridiron news

- Keith Olbermann, one of the most overhyped performers on TV, gets his first network sports assignment insix years when he works a special edition of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann"at 4 p.m. Sunday on NBC. Olbermann will also be a regular on NBC's "Sunday Night Football". It's not that I don't think Olbermann is good. It's not that he's not entertaining and opinionated. I just don't believe he's the greatest thing since slice bread.

Tee it up

- NBC will have live coverage of the 107th U.S. Amateur Golf Championship at 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday from the Olympic Club near San Francisco. The event features the best amateur golfers competing in a match-play format. Is it worth watching a bunch of amateurs? Consider past winners include Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Bobby Jones.

- CBS is trying to put lipstick on a stick by trumpeting the FedExCup, the PGA Tour's four-event playoff format -- starting with The Barclays this weekend. Normally, this would be a big deal. But Woods, the best player in the world, is sitting this one out. Still, the other major champions -- Masters winner Zach Johnson, British Open winner Padraig Harrington, U.S. Open winner Angel Cabrera -- as well as Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Ernie Els, Jim Furyk and Retief Goosen are among the 144 players in the field. But as veteran Jeff Maggert put it, "probably half the players out here couldn't care less about it. The other half are indifferent."

Tennis, anyone?

The USA Network will telecast 107 hours of the U.S. Open Tennis Championship over 12 days, starting at 8 a.m. Monday.

More than 95 of those hours are live.

CBS will have live weekend coverage, including the men's and women's finals.

The networks will share a broadcast crew with John McEnroe, Tracy Austin and Mary Carillo all working.

Around the dial

- Outside of the Olympics, track and field doesn't get much love in this country. But with the 2008 Beijing Olympics on the horizon, Versus and NBC will team to carry 23 1/2 hours from the 11th IAAF World Championships from Osaka, Japan. Versus starts things at 3 p.m. Saturday and has weekday coverage at 4 p.m. all next week. NBC jumps in Saturday and Sunday. Versus finishes things up late Sunday. NBC is sending its Olympic broadcast team -- Tom Hammond, Carol Lewis, Lewis Johnson, Ato Bolden, Dwight Stones and Bob Neumeier -- to Japan.

- John Saunders and Bill Walton are the main announcers for ESPN2's coverage of the FIBA Americas Championship from Las Vegas. The U.S. plays the Virgin Islands in a re-air at 11 tonight, meets Canada at noon Saturday and plays Brazil at 6 p.m. Sunday. Second-round play starts Monday with ESPN2 airing a game at 8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and 9 p.m. Thursday.

- Barring more bad weather, the Little League World Series championship game will air at 12:30 p.m. Sunday on ABC.

- The $1 million Travers Stakes, live at 1 p.m. Saturday on ESPN, features Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense.

- With the addition of Time Warner Cable in New York on digital basic, ESPNU now has distribution in about 20 million homes. The network launched in March 2005 with 3 million homes. ESPNU, which is available in San Diego on both Cox and Time Warner on the digital sports tier, kicks off the high school football season Saturday with a doubleheader that features No. 9 Booker T. Washington (Fla.) at No. 8 Summerville (S.C.) at 9 a.m. and First Coast (Fla.) at Berkley (S.C.) at 1 p.m.

- Primetime ratings for X Games 13 on ESPN were up 35 percent from last year among men ages 12-17 and was the most viewed X Games among men 12-54. Overall, the X Games averaged a 1.0 rating up 19 percent from last year with 38 million people tuning in.

- With 13 races remaining on the NASCAR Nextel Cup schedule there is still time for fans to check out NASCAR HotPass on DirecTV. The service, exclusive to DirecTV customers, provides five dedicated driver channels, driver-point-of-view cameras, live audio between the divers and the crew chief as well as real-time statistics. Cost for the season is $99, but race fans can sample a race for $29.99.

John Maffei's TV/Radio Column appears every Friday. He can be reached at (760) 740-3547 or jmaffei@nctimes.com.