Ryder Cup fever ... catch it. Or don't.

Is ESPN feeling lucky?

Its coverage of the foursome and four-ball matches from the Ryder Cup at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky, which begins Friday at 5 a.m. (and goes to 3 p.m. live, then replays it on ESPN Classic from 3 to 10 p.m.), is more residual effect from the deal Disney made with G.E. when the Peacock came to get Al Michaels out of his ABC/ESPN contract to use him on its "Sunday Night Football" telecasts starting in 2006.

In addition to obtaining the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (one of Walt Disney's first cartoon creations, which somehow was in possession of the NBC ownership group), ESPN/ABC received the rights to this telecast window (with NBC producing it), as well as Thursday's opening ceremony coverage (1 to 3 p.m.).

The great fear for NBC is that the U.S. pulls another early collapse and makes the weekend competition meaningless. "They've smoked the U.S. on Fridays, and it's almost over," NBC's Johnny Miller said of the way the European teams have performed in winning three of the last four events.

Mike Tirico hosts the ESPN coverage with Andy North, Judy Rankin, Bill Kratzert, Scott Van Pelt, Tom Rinaldi and Rick Reilly chiming in. Jason Sobel will also be blogging live on ESPN.com.

It's too bad the two captains -- Paul Azinger and Nick Faldo (pictured above) -- aren't doing the matches for their respective broadcast networks (ABC and CBS).

On the weekend (foursome and four-ball from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and singles matches from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday), NBC has Miller trying to avoid using the "c" word (choke) with Dan Hicks, Roger Maltbie, Mark Rolfing, Dottie Pepper, Gary Koch and Bob Murphy, plus Jimmy Roberts' "essays."

Says producer Tommy Roy on how the network handles match play: "(It is) one of our specialties, and cover match play differently than stroke play. For example, when we go to a match, we stay with it. You can't jump around from player-to-player and hole-to-hole as you would in a stroke play event. It's a daunting task, but one that we love."

ESPN Classic replays the second (4 to 9 p.m. Saturday) and third rounds (2 to 7 p.m. Monday), while ESPNEWS has the closing ceremony (3 to 4 p.m. Sunday). The Golf Channel has live reports daily (starting today) from 3 to 5 p.m.