We are coming up on the true test of a sports fan.

This test promises to separate the casual from the committed, the watchers from the wackos, the merely dedicated from the truly demented.

I’m referring, of course, to NBC’s Olympic Triplecast, which begins this weekend and runs for the duration of the Barcelona Bonanza. If you haven’t seen the commercials, the Triplecast is the network’s gamble that there are enough of us out there in TV-land who can pass the test of true fandom (not to mention the test of true disposable income) to help float NBC’s cost of televising the Games by ordering the events served continuously for 24 hours on three cable-TV channels on a pay-per-view basis.

It’s a gamble because NBC, which is running the operation in conjunction with Cablevision Systems of America, can’t be sure there are two million “true fans” out there. The network can only hope there are enough folks who live in the glow of their tubes like so many pale bottom feeders in the TV sea to make the Triplecast at least a break-even proposition.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably enough of a sports fan to be ready for the unavoidable financial numbers that explain why NBC is doing pay-per-view (everyone else can skip ahead three paragraphs).

The network paid $401 million for the exclusive rights to televise the Olympics. A Chicago Tribune story Monday noted NBC has run up another $100 million in production and advertising costs. Total expenditure: $501 million.

The Chicago Tribune story quotes NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol as saying advertising revenue will pick up $300 million of the tab. That leaves just over $200 million still to be recouped. NBC figured pay-per-view was the best alternative.

Hence, two million Triplecast subscribers are needed. Fast. According to the Tribune, only 100,000 viewers have signed up for the Triplecast to date. That’s nationwide.

Many of us here in Eastern Maine will have the chance to show we’re capable of becoming Olympic couch potatoes. Cablevision, the friendly folks who run the wires to 24,150 homes from Lincoln to Newport and Dexter to Mount Desert Island, is offering sales of subscriptions to the NBC Triplecast.

According to Deb Chapman, Cablevision’s sales manager, Mainers served by her company have a single choice. For $125, we get what amounts to the “silver” package offered in other parts of the country (Maine doesn’t have the technology yet to get all three packages).

“For that price the viewer receives all three channels broadcasting for 24 hours for 15 days (of the Olympics),” said Chapman.

There is one slight hitch.

“We’re not what’s referred to as `addressable,”‘ Chapman said. “People who subscribe will have to pick up converter boxes.”

To date, Chapman said “20 or so” local fans have taken the plunge and subscribed. But she expects the number to escalate as the week goes on and the Games draw closer.

“I think that’s going to happen. We had six (subscribe) Monday,” Chapman said.

This last-minute subscribing phenomenon is something the network people are hoping catches on in a big way. And it just might.

According to cable TV analyst Jim Dolan, quoted in the New York Times Monday, prior experience with boxing pay-per-view broadcasts has shown “90 percent of subscribers wait until the last day (prior to the event)” before coughing up the cash.

Oh, one other item of interest.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs has cited NBC Sports and Cablevision for deceptive advertising. Prospective viewers should be aware, despite network claims of “24-hour-coverage” there will be no LIVE coverage after 5 p.m., Eastern Time. Everything shown between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m., including prime evening hours, is taped from earlier in the day.

That probably won’t matter much, though, to the “true fans” who are up for this Olympian test.