It isn’t a stretch to say that 95 percent of the country couldn’t tell you the name of one horse in the Kentucky Derby Saturday. And maybe that number is low.

But many of us will watch simply because it is the Kentucky Derby. It is the oldest continous sports event (happy No. 138) in the the United States, held annually in the first Saturday of May.

Last year’s race drew an audience of 14.11 million people on NBC. Yes, there’s something to said about tradition. Long live the Run for the Roses.

NBC will have complete coverage, starting at 11 a.m. (Eastern) on NBC Sports Network and then at 4 p.m. on NBC.

Tom Hammond returns as co-host. The sport is in his blood. At one point in college, he thought he would have a career in horse racing.

Funny how things works out. As a broadcaster, he wound up with a front-row seat, playing an integral role in covering the biggest races.

I talked to Hammond yesterday. He made an interesting comment about the Kentucky Derby being the most complex event he covers. Hammond also calls Notre Dame football and will handle track at the Olympics for NBC.

Hammond: A football game takes place in a finite area. You know there’s going to be 11 on each team. Here, there is two minutes of action, and yet everything else is so important to capture what the Derby is all about. Somebody says, ‘It’s a horse race, it last two minutes.’ It’s so much more.

The Olympics is the king of the stories, with athletes from all over the world pursuing their life’s dream. In horse racing, there’s just so many different aspects to it: the owners, the jockeys, the trainers. The horse themselves have so many different personalities. To be able to weave all those stories together is a dream come true for a sportscaster. It’s a gold mine of stories to tell.

What about the unpredictability of the race?

Hammond: There are 20 horses in this race, and often the best horse doesn’t get through. It’s so complex in that way. The other great thing about it is that it’s an any man’s race. The owner with the most money doesn’t always win. Multi-millionaires have spent their whole life trying to win the Derby and haven’t been successful. There’s so many different possibilities.

It’s a big week for the Manning franchise. Eli Manning will host this week’s edition of Saturday Night Live.

Unlike his brother, Peyton, Eli had to win a second Super Bowl before being awarded  the hosting duties.

NBC has released the series of promos for this week’s show. Manning does one with Jason Sudeikis and then several with Kenan Thompson.

Judging from the promos, Eli likely won’t rival Peyton’s performance on SNL, which might have been the best ever for an athlete.

But as Seth Meyers noted on David Letterman Tuesday, it doesn’t matter how Eli does Saturday.

That’s the best thing about athlete hosts is they don’t stress out because nothing on our show is like harder than being chased around by a 300-pound man. And you can’t lose your day job. Like you can’t go back to camp and Tom Coughlin’s not going to be like, ‘Hey, we saw you on ‘SNL.’ We’re going another direction. We found a younger quarterback who’s better at accents.

Farewell to tape delay and waiting for NBC to package the neat stuff in primetime at the Olympics.

The network has decided that all 32 sports in London will be streamed live at nbcolympics.com.

Richard Sandomir reports in the New York Times:

The live streaming of every event is a major shift at the NBC Sports Group, which was formed after Comcast acquired control of NBC Universal. Under General Electric, its former owner, NBC Sports did not stream live events that would be featured in prime time, lest they diminish ratings.

Two years ago, at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, only hockey and curling were streamed live in order to protect prime time. At the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, 25 sports were streamed live but none of them were important to the evening broadcast, which is usually at least four hours long.

“The way consumers consume video has changed over the years,” Mr. Cordella said. “We can’t go back with hindsight and say we were wrong.”

He said that NBC had data to show that live streaming could increase viewership of a event shown hours later on delay. “We’re not scared of cannibalization,” Mr. Cordella said, adding, “Anytime you have a great event that happens before it shows on the air, it increases ratings and generates buzz.”

It’s the right move for NBC. It will greatly increase traffic to the site, and frankly the people who watch on their computers will be the hardcore fans. The bulk of the primetime audience is made up of casual viewers who care about these sports once every four years.

A win-win.