PHILADELPHIA — If you’re one of the millions of Americans who have never seen a rugby sevens match, who might not even know the sport exists, you’ll probably be surprised to learn that NBC is devoting 14 hours to this weekend’s 2011 USA Sevens Collegiate Rugby Championships at PPL Park in Chester, Pa.

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The answer is simple. Rugby sevens will become an Olympic sport in 2016, and NBC has long carried a torch for anything related to the Games its multimillions support.

“Rugby sevens first came on our radar a few years ago when it, along with golf, was admitted as a new sport into the Olympics,” Jon Miller, head of programming for NBC Sports and Versus, said Tuesday. “We started investigating it and looking into it, and we realized what an incredibly fast-paced, exciting sport it was, one that people in this country really didn’t know about.”

If the network has guessed right, that should begin to change Saturday and Sunday, when the Olympian coverage on NBC, Versus, and Universal Sports will be sprinkled with rugby lessons, graphic tutorials, and comparisons to football, rugby’s hyper-popular American descendant.

Though most U.S. colleges offer rugby — usually as a club sport — the NCAA does not yet sanction the sport. This collegiate tournament was devised a year ago by NBC, USA Rugby, USA Seven, and the International Rugby Board. The 2010 event, with more limited television coverage, took place in Columbus, Ohio.

“That first tournament beat the NCAA lacrosse championship head-to-head,” Miller said about ratings. “We were pretty pleased.”

Without an NCAA to develop a selection process, NBC and USA Sevens themselves chose the 16 teams, “all brand names,” Miller said.

Utah and California, last year’s champion and runner-up, respectively, were easy. The other schools, which include Penn State and Temple, were selected based on their performance this year. According to an NBC spokesman, some consideration was given to geography, apparently to produce a field that might attract viewers from all regions.

A variant of the traditional 15-vs.-15 rugby, sevens has been played for more than a century. Its games are contested on the same field (330 feet by 230 feet) but with two seven-man teams and two seven-minute halves. The typical sevens game lasts 20 minutes. As a result, the 16-team tournament this weekend can be completed in two days.

NBC hopes this streamlined version of rugby, speedier and more wide-open, will appeal to American audiences.

“People here know a little bit about rugby and obviously there was the movie Invictus (about the sport in South Africa). But very few if any people knew about rugby sevens. It’s much faster. I equate it to baseball without a centerfielder. ... You need to be a five-tool athlete to play.”

There are signs America is taking note. At the 2011 USA Sevens tournament — for amateur club teams — in Las Vegas, total attendance for the two-day event jumped from 14,000 a year earlier to 50,000.

According to Miller, NBC and USA Sevens wanted last year’s initial collegiate tournament to be held in the Philadelphia area, but PPL Park wasn’t yet open.

International rugby officials, he said, “very much want to” stage the 2015 World Cup of rugby in the United States and many will be here this weekend to observe the crowds, operation, and enthusiasm surrounding the sevens tourney.

Asked what about the city appealed to the sevens officials and the network, now owned by Comcast, Miller said it was because Philadelphia was “one of the top two or three — if not the greatest — sports cities in the U.S.”

“The city not only supports the Phillies, Eagles, Sixers, and Flyers,” he said, “but it also supports new events. I saw what happened with the NCAA wrestling that was held there several months ago, and I was blown away.”

The telecast will begin on Saturday, when Universal Sports shows opening-round games from noon to 2 p.m. EDT. Versus and NBC10 take over from 2 to 4. NBC assumes coverage from 4 to 6 p.m. before it returns to Versus for the final two hours. On Sunday, Universal Sports will be on the air from noon to 2, Versus and NBC10 will simulcast from 2 to 4, and NBC goes from 4 to 6.