You’d think there could be nothing funny or lighthearted about what happened yesterday in the skies over Texas when the Space Shuttle Columbia broke into pieces and crashed into the Earth.

But that’s only if you didn’t see MSNBC’s press conference with the sheriff’s department of Sabine, Texas last night.

Starring (not making this up) Billy Ted Smith and Sheriff Tom Mattox (who standing next to each other looked a lot like the old guys from the Bartles and James commercials) this press conference is now the gold standard by which all other federal disaster press conferences will be judged.

Part of it was the slow, painfully slow, drawl with which Billy Ted speaks. Part of it was Sheriff Mattox’s huge cowboy hat (it looked like those styrofoam ones they give you if you test drive an RV) and another was that Mattox actually was wearing a tin star on his purple work shirt.

But most of it had to do with the questions they were asked.

“What exactly are you looking for?”
How do you resist the temptation to say, “Uh…that’d be the Space Shuttle Columbia.”

“What should be people do if they find a piece of the Shuttle?”
Smith: “Call the 911 operator and get out of the area.”
Mattox: “For God sakes, don’t breathe it.”

The best moment for me was when a reporter asked what was being done with the body parts that were being found. Mattox: “They’re being taken by the FBI and NASA to an undisclosed location.”
Reporter: “Is it the high school gym?”
Smith: “Uh…well…uh…no.”
Mattox: “It’s undisclosed. Even they don’t know where it is.”

Another ludicrous aspect of the media coverage was the mad dash of the A-list news anchors to get to their sets on a normally sleepy Saturday morning.

From the moment I began watching the coverage at about 8:30, I kept flipping around the dial to monitor which of the anchors would crash the set first. My money was on Dan Rather, and Dan didn’t let me down. By 9:30 a.m. he had replaced the hot blonde woman on the Early Show set and was anchoring the happenings.

While Rather gets credit for being the first to read the 1967 Gus Grissom quote about the effect an astronaut’s death should have on the progress of the space program (Grissom felt it should have none), he completely botched the details of the first accident that claimed the life of astronauts. He referred to the Apollo 0 mission and couldn’t remember the names of the other two astronauts.

It was Apollo 1 and astronauts Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. Big deal, you say? Rather WAS THERE!

I admit to being a bit of a space geek. I’ve read dozens of books on the space program. I even watched The Right Stuff last night. I have an unbelievable respect for astronauts and the dangers they face. And yet, after hundreds of space flights from Mercury to Apollo to the Shuttle missions and everything in between, only two missions have “crashed”. The Challenger in 1987 and the Columbia yesterday. (The Apollo 1 tragedy was a training mission fire that occurred at the Kennedy Space Center).

In 40 years of space flight, we’ve never lost a man or monkey in space. The Russians fired a few dogs into space that are still going, though. How many dog years in a light year, anyway?

So when you see astronauts asked if they’d still be willing to get in a Space Shuttle, just think of it this way. People get in airplanes every day, and I think it’s been more than 40 years since one of those crashed.

Notre Dame and Georgetown played again yesterday. They last met last January in a game that went FOUR overtimes. Four!

Yesterday they decided that four was ridiculous, and so they only played two overtimes.

ESPN Classic is showing the 1978 NCAA title game between Kentucky and Duke. Dick Enberg (who’ll be calling the Illinois-Michigan State game at noon today on CBS) is doing the game with Al McGuire and Billy Packer. Even 25 years ago, Billy was a jerk.

Mike Gminski is playing for Duke (along with Jim Spanarkel of course) and Mike only has one eyebrow. It’s frightening.

But the weirdest part is that the game is being played in St. Louis, but they’re using Indiana’s court. I’m serious. In St. Louis, Missouri they have a red and white court with a big state of Indiana in the middle. Huh?

They’re in some building called “The Checkerdome.”

Marcus Fizer’s season is over. It’s going to be tough to trade him now, huh?

Frank Thomas still won’t talk to the media. Why does the media want to talk to him?

Phil Rogers looks at Joe Borchards and sees Lance Berkman. Why is he an overweight guy who hits everything and plays center field like the ghost of Gorman Thomas, too?

Rick Morrissey is offended that the White Sox have besmerched the memory of the Comiskeys by renaming Comiskey Park “US Cellular Field”. I think Reinsdorf is merely carrying on the Comiskey family tradition of being cheap and treating the players like crap.

The Niners are really going to interview Greg Blache. Check out the quote by Jeff Garcia. He seems really excited about it.

Mike Downey with a good one on the man who the Cubs have issued Hector Villanueva’s old number. And Danny Jackson’s, and Kevin Foster’s and…

Maybe Mike Brey thinks he gets time and a half for overtime?

If defense wins championships, the Illini should make more room in the trophy case.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to applaud the Ohio athletic association for grounding LeBron.

David Huh on the drive to the hoop that won it for Torrian Jones and Notre Dame yesterday.

But the real story was the play of Matt Carroll.

Underwear supermodel Len Pasquarielli on the Niners coach search.

Peter Gammons’ Sunday best focuses on the American League.

With signing day approaching, those creepy guys who chase high school prospects around are in all their glory.

Sarah the fetishist Joe Millionaire “contestant” fesses up.

John Glenn tells NASA what re-entry is like.

Among those things being found from the Shuttle breakup are discernable body parts. Eww.

Those Iraquis are fun, ain’t they?

A city in Belgium taxes people by the pound. That’d be bad news for people in Wisconsin.