NBC Sports Group to Air College Rugby Championship
NBC Sports Group presents live rugby “sevens” action this weekend from the annual Penn Mutual Collegiate Rugby Championship from Talen Energy Stadium in Philadelphia. The action, seven-per-side rugby instead of the traditional 15, airs on NBC and NBCSN.
Coverage begins on Saturday, June 3, at 3 p.m. ET on NBC with live preliminary-round matches, followed by live coverage on cable's NBCSN at 5 p.m. Coverage continues Sunday at 1 p.m. ET on NBCSN, and shifts to NBC at 3 p.m. with live coverage of the championship final.
NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app will provide streaming coverage of the action.
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Leigh Diffey will handle play by play for all telecasts. Former USA Sevens captain Brian Hightower is in the booth, too, while Marty Snider reports all the action from the sidelines.
The eighth annual Penn Mutual Collegiate Rugby Championship features 40 teams from various colleges, including four-time defending-championCalifornia on the men’s side and three-time champion Penn State on the women’s, as well as Army, Navy, Notre Dame and UCLA.
Rugby sevens, a faster version of the sport, was featured at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Teams will play seven minute halves, with a two-minute halftime.
NBCSN will also present a 30-minute special Sunday at 12:30 p.m. ET: Rugby Rising Presented by Penn Mutual, leading into live coverage of the Collegiate Rugby Championship. The program examines the growing culture of rugby in the United States.
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Michael Malone is content director at B+C and Multichannel News. He joined B+C in 2005 and has covered network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television, including writing the "Local News Close-Up" market profiles. He also hosted the podcasts "Busted Pilot" and "Series Business." His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The L.A. Times, The Boston Globe and New York magazine.