NBC Sports’ Ahmed Fareed excited for ‘loose’ approach to Big Ten basketball on Peacock

While NBC’s acquisition of Big Ten football games for Peacock garnered significant attention, the addition of basketball content during the conference’s season will be even more impactful.

This is due to NBC’s exclusive coverage of over 30 men’s and 20 women’s games featuring the conference’s top teams and players, all streaming on Peacock.

Appearing on the latest episode of Awful Announcing’s Short and to the Point podcast, Ahmed Fareed, who currently serves as a host and reporter on various events and properties across NBC Sports, talked with host Jessica Kleinschmidt about some of these upcoming broadcasts and what he’s looking forward to.

“We’ve got a ton of games this year for the first time. They are exclusively all on Peacock,” Fareed said. “Growing up in Michigan, like I grew up in Big Ten country. I was rooting for Michigan. I had friends who lived right next door to me, lifelong friends who rooted for Michigan State; I still do to this day. So, when we got the Big Ten, and I was able to help cover the football side of things — and now we got the basketball side — I was so pumped because I just realized the passion of that fanbase. And all the fanbases are so huge. And how could they not be? There are 40-50,000 students in any given year at any of these Big Ten schools.

“So, we got our games exclusively Peacock. A lot of these games will be on Tuesday — as a Tuesday doubleheader — as the season goes on. We just kicked off our conference play (Tuesday, Dec. 5) with big wins by Wisconsin and Indiana against Michigan State and Michigan. And so we’ll ride throughout the year. We got some Big Ten tournament games as well.”

As Fareed acknowledged, Peacock is becoming the go-to platform for Big Ten basketball fans, offering a significant number of exclusive games, including Tuesday doubleheaders and select tournament matchups.

But the exciting thing for Fareed is NBC is building something from scratch.

“There’s nothing to model this against for NBC Sports,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve covered a major conference like this, at this scale; doubleheaders every Tuesday. And so, we’re building a show from scratch, and one of the first things I said to our production department is, ‘Let’s keep this loose. We want to be loose here.’ There’s a reason why everyone points to Inside the NBA as the best studio show ever made. And now, we’re never going to be Inside the NBA; I mean, maybe 50 years from now, you can get there. But we should at least be going in that direction, right? What makes us unique? What makes us stand out? What can we bring? Let’s not take ourselves too seriously, but yet take the sport and the game seriously.

“So, that’s what we’re gonna try and do. We’ll try to have fun, but we have super-knowledgeable guys in Jordan Cornette and (former Georgia Tech and Memphis men’s basketball coach) Josh Pastner and (former Chattanooga and UMass men’s basketball coach) Matt McCall, who are going to be the analysts that give us the freedom. When you have the smart guys that know the sport — that also does give us the freedom to hang loose a little bit — have some fun because you’re not just idiots up there joking around that have no idea what they’re talking about. That’s going to hopefully be the essence of what we do. But we got some really, really cool games.”

That includes the highly anticipated matchup between No. 1 Arizona and No. 4 Purdue game, which will air exclusively on Peacock on Saturday, Dec. 15.

NBC is building a brand-new platform for Big Ten basketball on Peacock, with doubleheaders, tournament games, and a fun, loose approach, as they aim to become the go-to platform for passionate fans. And Fareed will play a massive part in that from the NBC Sports facility studio back in Stamford, CT.

Short and to the Point with Jessica Kleinschmidt is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. For more content, subscribe to AA’s YouTube page.