The Mtn. – MountainWest Sports Network is a joint venture between CBS College Sports Network and Comcast, but this Friday, the network will get a Comcast-inspired online makeover. At 7 p.m. MT on Aug. 14, The Mtn. will launch an enhanced version of its official Website, themtn.tv, which will align with the redesign that Comcast recently rolled out for its regional sports networks nationwide. Integrating input from viewers and fans, the site will feature news, scores, and video highlights from all nine Mountain West Conference member schools.

When the Nebraska Cornhuskers kick off their football season on Sept. 5, fans in Memorial Stadium will be engaged in a new HD experience. Newly installed Mitsubishi LED video screens will be powered from the recently completed HuskerVision production facilities designed and installed by Minneapolis-based Alpha Video & Audio Inc.

How do you go to 11 college campuses in 15 days? Take a bus. That’s what the Big Ten Network is doing this month to preview the college football season. Covering some 3,000 miles, the network is visiting each of its schools’ campuses and practice facilities and producing daily 90-minute specials from each location.

The University of Missouri and FSN will make Mizzou’s football games against Bowling Green on Sept. 12 and Furman on Sept. 19 available to viewers via pay-per-view. The pay-per-view telecasts will be available on participating cable systems in the region and nationwide to satellite and telco customers, giving fans the option to watch a game they otherwise wouldn’t be able to see on television.

Nearly 300 colleges and universities nationwide take part in intercollegiate athletics outside of the jurisdiction of the NCAA. Until this season, student-athletes competing under the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) have, for the most part, been off the national broadcast radar. Thanks to College Fanz Sports Network, however, a different pair of schools will enjoy some national coverage every week throughout the 2009 football season, during the inaugural season of the NAIA Football Game of the Week.

Sometimes, scoring a touchdown requires a spin on a bicycle. TouchDown Productions, a local sports-television-production company based in Grass Valley, CA, has been in business for 13 years, covering mostly high school sports and Little League baseball. When word broke that Lance Armstrong would be participating in this summer’s Nevada City Classic bicycle race, however, TouchDown Productions had the opportunity to put together the nation’s only live broadcast — both televised and online — of the race. Armstrong took the title at the event, thrusting TouchDown Productions into the spotlight. The company has now built a second production truck, doubling its production load for the 2009 football season, and for the first time, every event that it covers will be streamed online.

The Department of Film & Video at Columbia College Chicago – one of the largest accredited film schools in the world – has made a significant investment in JVC ProHD camcorders. The department, housed in the college’s School of Media Arts, recently purchased more than 100 JVC GY-HM100 handheld camcorders to serve as the primary acquisition medium for hundreds of students completing its Foundations Program, a two-semester curriculum designed to introduce them to the craft of professional filmmaking.

Keyframe and Daktronics will provide content and event production for the University of Minnesota’s Football, men’s and women’s basketball, hockey, volleyball, gymnastics, and wresting seasons at TCF Bank Stadium, Williams Arena, and Mariucci Arena on campus.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham will upgrade Bartow Arena, Young Memorial Field, and the new on-campus softball complex with integrated scoring and video-display systems to be designed, manufactured, and installed by Daktronics.

An HD-1500 fiber-optic link provided by MultiDyne Video & Fiber Optic Systems transmitted HD-SDI and SDI TV signals during the CBS Sports broadcast of the Michigan State-Connecticut game during the NCAA Final Four from ActionCam’s aerial camera.

There have already been several shows and specials featuring networks going behind-the-scenes at pro- and college-football camps, but The Mtn. – MountainWest Sports Network will take a rare look at officials as they undergo their own version of training camp.

CBS Sports will prepare fans for Saturday’s heroes with the 2009 EA Sports NCAA Football Preview Show Saturday from 1 p.m.-2 p.m. ET, featuring lead college-football analyst Gary Danielson, Spencer Tillman, and Tony Barnhart.

ESPN announced the first two sites for its College GameDay Built by The Home Depot NCAA football show: Atlanta Sept. 5, where No. 5 Alabama will meet No. 7 Virginia tech in the second-annual Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game; and Columbus, OH, Sept. 12, when host No. 6 Ohio State entertains No. 4 USC.

ESPN.com launched College Football Challenge, its first player-based fantasy college football game, and the site will also bring back College Pick ‘Em and College Bowl Mania.

Duke University got a trophy for winning the Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament last March, and Atlanta’s economy got a much-needed lift in the wallet.

The NCAA Men’s Volleyball Committee is recommending a video exchange between the participating teams at the finals site.

Just one week after the National Hockey League’s Boston Bruins host the Philadelphia Flyers New Year’s Day at Fenway Park, home of Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox, talks are ongoing for a Jan. 8 college-hockey match-up at the ballpark between Boston College and Boston University, John Connolly of the Boston Herald reports.

As the Big East continues to try and improve its future bowl lineup, the league is strongly considering signing on for a new game in New York City, commissioner John Marinatto said.

Dartmouth College, where former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was an All Ivy football player in the 1960s, has scrapped a $15 million stadium renovation project as its sports endowment plunged as much as 18 percent.

Evan Shaw, Ohio Athletics' Director of Multimedia Marketing, has been awarded an Emmy by the Ohio Valley Region of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Outstanding Sports Videography.

Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Commissioner Rudy Keeling is pleased to announce that the conference continues to be a leader in athletics administration and has implemented several cost saving initiatives that will benefit the entire membership and the conference during these difficult economic times.

Don’t make those plans to attend NCAA Division I-AA or Division III football playoffs at the University of Delaware, Delaware State or Wesley College this fall.

The policy, distributed to member schools Thursday and obtained by The Tuscaloosa News on Friday, also places restrictions on TV broadcasts, limiting news stations to clips of no longer than three minutes and allowing highlights for only 72 hours after the conclusion of a game.

Shorter College Director of Athletics Bill Peterson announced the school’s plan to begin a men’s and women’s lacrosse program with play scheduled to begin in the spring of 2011.

Everyone knows the recession is hurting sports. Major League Baseball tickets are going for way below face value on StubHub. NBA franchises, more than half of which lost money this past season, according to Commissioner David Stern, scrambled to offer fans food and ticket discount plans and other creative packages to keep them coming through the doors. Even the resilient NFL saw a 1% attendance dip in 2008, and the league expects another small drop this year.

Division II has announced an eight-game regular-season men’s and women’s basketball package with CBS College Sports.

Injury lawsuits related to cheerleading, recently named the most dangerous youth sport, are springing up around the country.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino will announce today the creation of a multimillion-dollar charitable foundation and consortium of professional sports teams, colleges and universities, and corporations to enhance opportunities for Boston student-athletes - a potential breakthrough for Boston’s chronically underfunded high school athletic system.

A college that is part of the Cambridge University is said to be in talks to acquire London’s O2 Arena for over $34 million, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The first basketball game ever to be played at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium will feature North Carolina facing Texas.

The Division III Women’s Golf Committee is asking the Division III Championships Committee to consider “relaxing” contest and participant minimums for automatic qualification to help the sport work through a numbers game.

Growing up in Calexico, Calif., University of Oklahoma senior Amber Flores had aspirations to play softball for the United States in the Olympics. On Thursday morning, Flores, the Oklahoma softball program and thousands of young women across America learn the Olympic fate of the sport they love.

The Western Athletic Conference's women's golf tournament will be April 19-21 at Longbow Golf Club in Mesa, Ariz., a neutral site for the league's seven schools.

For years, the University of Maryland has chartered flights to carry the football team to games at Duke and the other schools in North Carolina.

Alabama and Virginia Tech on Sept. 5 will play one another in Atlanta in one of the most anticipated games of the 2009 season - a game sponsored by Chick-fil-A. The Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game, as it is formally known, is expected to attract a sellout crowd to the Georgia Dome, draw a large television audience and bring millions of dollars to both schools.

The four major pro sports leagues and the NCAA asked the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday to stop Delaware from allowing sports betting while the court considers their appeal of a district judge's ruling in the case.

Schools eyeing a jump to NCAA Division I might have to dig deeper into their pockets.

Beaverton will hire a legal team to study bringing baseball to the city, but already some are saying the process is moving too quickly.

The New York Times reports that ESPN RISE, the division of ESPN that caters to high school athletes, is using Webisodes and online videogames to promote its Elite 11 quarterback competition. James Brown, senior vice president of ESPN RISE, said the new Webisodes and videogames created for this year’s competition and a one-hour TV program devoted to it that will be broadcast on ESPNU on August 27 “represent the first time ESPN RISE has taken one of its events and created such a comprehensive program.”

Cablevision Systems wants you to join the varsity: MSG Varsity, its upcoming high-school-sports network serving the New York metro area, reports Todd Spangler of Multichannel News.