NORTH POLE VAULT

Fortunately--very fortunately--for me, they placed me in business class ("It's business/It's business tiiiiiime!"), and that makes a 13-hour flight more palatable than a two-hour economy class flight from Laguardia to O'Hare.

Also making the flight more enjoyable was my neighbor, Peng Li, a Chinese native now living in Columbia, Md. We spoke very little for most of the flight because, well, I'm a surly misanthrope and because he had one of those thick accents that your freshman year engineering T.A. had...before you dropped engineering for a history major. But near the end of the flight, when he asked me what I did for a living and I told him, his reply was, "How do you think Notre Dame's going to do this year?"

Knock me over with a chopstick. Turns out that Peng Li is also a Notre Dame alum and that he actually was an engineering T.A. there. We even had a friend in common. So, if you're keeping score, that's 1.3 billion Chinese people and I happen to sit next to the one who knew someone in common with me.

So now...Beijing. First impressions: From where my hotel is situated, about a quarter-mile east of The Bird's Nest (i.e., The National Stadium), Beijing feels very flat, very developed and very hot. Basically, it feels a lot like Las Vegas minus all the fat people in jean shorts. 

As I was jet-li'd, I woke up at 2 a.m. and, disobeying nearly every rule in the NBC Security handbook, went out alone for a stroll around the Olympic Green Zone at 3 a.m. I felt pretty good about it, having mastered the Chinese term for "hello" (pronounced "knee how", though it sounds like "meow", which makes me think that any Chinese who saw "Super Troopers" totally didn't get that one scene...but I digress).

Guards are stationed nearly every 100 meters at the Green Zone, even at 3 a.m., and most all of them are stationed on little podiums. Each podium is about 3 feet by 3 feet wide, and maybe one foot tall. I'm not sure if they have those because of a stature complex (which I don't understand, as the tallest person at these Games will be Chinese, I think) or because they're simply trying to get into the Olympic spirit.

Regardless, it is very, very cool to be here. You'll be totally jaw-dropped when you see the National Aquatics Centre. which looks like a cross between The Blob and an unholy coupling between Spongebob and Blue Man Group (it's possible). Anyway, as you can see, the two structures are quite close to one another, and the National Indoor Stadium is just a few yards away.

 Other Beijing impressions, on my first day: Yes, it's crowded and yes, the sky is hazy. The Beijing sky has a capacity for apacity (pardon my audacity). The people, though, are absolutely first-rate in terms of being helpful, friendly and professional. And the roads are excellent. It's like this: If it would take hosting an Olympic Games for the Van Wyck, Cross Bronx and FDR Drive to finally become smoothly paved, then I'll volunteer to chair the New York City Olympic committee yesterday.

Final first-day moment: I'm checking in at the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) and I run into one of my very favorite people (not just at NBC, but anywhere), Michael Weisman. He's a very successful sports producer (he's done everything from Super Bowls to World Series to Olympics to that ill-fated Jane Pauley show) and he shoots me a typical Weisman idea. "Since (American gymnast) Paul Hamm's injured, why didn't they just cover up the injury and have his twin brother take his place? We could do a Prince and the Pauper deal at the Olympics! And then NBC could do a special investigation and expose it! Wouldn't that have been great for ratings?"

I happen to love the idea. Which is why I'm not in management.

REVENGE OF THE NERDS

Wonderful story in the sports section of Monday's New York Times (as if I read the Times every day...I don't, but only because the words and ideas are too big for me...and because there's no Page Six) about a trio of Nebraska students who have basically revolutionized the practice of football coaches watching film. As a 9 month-long student project, the trio (David Graff, Brian Kaiser and John Wirtz) developed a program called Huddle, which is kind of a Facebook-meets-film room system. According to the article, "The full playbook is available, in color, eliminating the need for paper versions...(and) players can access that data from anywhere on the internet."

There's much, much more to it than that (read the story by Greg Bishop...it's mind-blowing), but the kicker is that you'll never guess which NFL team was not only the first to purchase the program, but made its owners agree to an exclusivity deal so that they'll be the only team in their division to be able to use it this season?

The New York Jets.

Spygate, meet Bill Gates.

KEEPING THE (HEART) BEAT

Also in Monday's Times, there was a blurb concerning the athletic stamina of rock drummers. Seems that a drummer's heartbeat can peak at 190 beats per minute during a concert, which is comparable to that of elite athletes under heavy exertion of me when confronted with this photograph. Anyway, these stats are the product of an eight-year study in Great Britain entitled "Clem Burke Drumming Project". Clem Burke is the drummer for Blondie...so I guess we can conclude that Mr. Burke, at least, does not have a heart of glass.