Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann already have figured out how they will divide highlights on NBC’s pregame show this season.

“I will be doing the highlights for the red states; Keith will be doing the highlights for the blue states,” Patrick joked.

Sequels and reunions sometimes do not match the quality of the original, but the sense here is that Patrick and Olbermann will replicate the unique chemistry and comedy they served up nightly when they anchored ESPN’s “SportsCenter” from 1992-97.

NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol wanted to hire Patrick and Olbermann before last season but could only add Olbermann. ESPN had the contractual right to block Patrick from taking an NFL TV job last season, even though Patrick already had left ESPN. But those contractual restrictions end in a couple of weeks (Sept. 1).

“This was something I’d been hoping to do for quite some time when I left ESPN — I wanted to do TV with Keith eventually again,” Patrick said.

Patrick said NBC’s Bob Costas suggested a Patrick-Olbermann reunion to both Patrick and Ebersol, even though the move means less responsibility for Costas on “Football Night in America.”

“Bob will do fewer highlights, (but) he is not ever opposed to having more people around if it makes the show better,” Ebersol said. “Costas never has counted lines in his life. He was pushing for this idea more than 15 months ago.”

And Patrick said, “Having Bob signing off on it was very important.”

The Olbermann-Patrick pairing ended on ESPN 11 years ago when Olbermann left for Fox. He now does a news show for MSNBC.

“When Keith left, I said, ‘You’ll never get this again,’ ” Patrick said.

“We never tried to understand why it worked. It just did. He was a great team player. We challenged each other.”

Olbermann said when they worked together, “there was an intent by him to crack me up or me to crack him up. As long we kept that undercurrent going, we knew it would be entertaining for the audience. Nobody was as competitive as Dan was in that area. He cannot be topped. When we worked together, we were as good as any five people in the business.”

The only negative: Seven hosts/commentators on a pregame show is obviously excessive. (The others, besides Patrick and Olbermann, are Costas, Cris Collinsworth, Tiki Barber, Jerome Bettis and Peter King.) If there were any more people in the studio, NBC would be violating fire-code laws.

“My major concern was we didn’t have enough people on the show last year,” Olbermann cracked. “We really needed that 19th guy.”

Ebersol isn’t worried. “Highlights will be Dan and Keith. They will do the highlights straight through (from 7:15 p.m.) until 8, with the exception of one (package) that Bob and Cris do. There will be nobody going to the locker room during the show. All the mikes will be left open.”

Around the dial

 Emmitt Smith, who found new and creative ways to butcher the language throughout his first year on ESPN, will be replaced by Cris Carter on “Sunday Countdown” this season. Smith will move to a lower-profile role on Sunday-morning editions of “SportsCenter” but will keep his gig as an on-site studio analyst from the Monday-night games with Stuart Scott and Steve Young. Also, Carter will succeed Dolphins executive Bill Parcells on “Monday Countdown.”

 Fox will pair former Ravens coach Brian Billick with Thom Brennaman on games this season, but Billick will join other announcing teams for three-man booths at times. All of Fox’s other announcing teams return intact.

 As part of a one-year experiment, all of NBC’s regular-season games (16 Sunday nights, one Thursday night) will be streamed live on nfl.com and nbcsports.com.

 Kudos to Fox’s Jay Glazer for breaking the Brett Favre-to-the-Jets trade — his latest in a long list of scoops the past year. … With the Favre trade, ESPN’s Week Three Jets-Chargers game suddenly looks a lot more interesting. The Jets’ only other definite national TV game is Nov. 13 vs. the Patriots on NFL Network.

 NFL Network president Steve Bornstein said the channel will start its eight-game schedule on the first Thursday of November, instead of Thanksgiving night, because “it stretches out the opportunity to be highly visible.”

There will be seven Thursday-night games (two more than last year) and only one Saturday-night game (Ravens at Cowboys on Dec. 20). “We like Thursday because it gives us a chance to preview the entire week of games coming up,” he said.

 Bornstein was pleased with the hiring of Giants radio voice Bob Papa as Bryant Gumbel’s replacement on play-by-play: “He’s an accomplished announcer, and his profile in New York has always been a successful one.”

Said Collinsworth: “It will be a different dynamic now. Bob lives the minutiae the way I do. We will get into discussions of what’s going on in the league.”

 HBO’s “Hard Knocks” has held our attention early on with several interesting fly-on-the-wall moments — Jerry Jones explaining why the Cowboys were cutting Terry Glenn; Jason Garrett explaining to Jones on Draft Day why they should select RB Felix Jones instead of Rashard Mendenhall; and Cowboys coaches expressing concern with rookie TE Martellus Bennett’s body language. But HBO acted unethically in airing a conversation between Jones and Glenn’s agent, James Gould, without telling Gould he was being taped. “I had no advance knowledge I would be taped and am very unhappy about it,” Gould said by phone, adding he still has “high regard” for the Cowboys’ owner. We also saw Adam Jones somehow catch a punted ball while holding five others at the same time.

Barry Jackson covers sports broadcasting for the Miami Herald.