He Must Be Writing for Bode Miller These Days

Don’t expect to see Jon Stewart doing any Winter Olympics promos for NBC.

Stewart, the host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” said in 2002 when he was a guest on Bob Costas’ HBO show, “The Winter Olympics are based on drunken dares. ‘You go down that.’ ‘No man, I’m not going down that.’ ‘You go down that on this.’ ‘All right.’

“That is the whole thing. You think the luge is a sport? It’s not a sport. It’s a bet. ‘Here, have a beer, lie like this.’ ”

Trivia time: Stewart played what sport at William and Mary?

Boning up: In luge, competitors lie on their backs and slide feet first. In skeleton, competitors lie on their stomachs and slide headfirst.

Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that skeleton is “the only Olympic sport where a gold medal could be won by a spectator who leans too far over a railing and falls onto the course.”

Name game: NBC insists on referring to the Italian city that is playing host to the Winter Olympics as Torino, though the English version is Turin. Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune says that Brian Williams, Katie Couric and all other NBC employees should go with Turin.

“If Brian is reporting a big breaking news story involving, say, the pope, coming out of Vatican City,” Downey wrote, “he does not say, ‘We send you now to our correspondent in Roma.’ ”

Downey also points out that Couric didn’t open the 2004 Olympics by saying, “Here I am in Athena.”

A real die-hard fan: Terry O’Neill, 50, of Pittsburgh was watching the Steelers and Indianapolis Colts in a bar last Sunday and suffered a heart attack when Jerome Bettis fumbled the ball at the two-yard line.

Fortunately for O’Neill, the bar was near a fire station and two firemen in the bar performed resuscitation and saved his life.

“The Steelers won the game and I’m still alive, so I guess I’m doing pretty good,” O’Neill told the Associated Press.

Asked if he would be back in the same bar Sunday to watch the Steelers and Denver Broncos, O’Neill said, “I guess I should probably take it easy and watch the game at home.”

Looking back: On this day in 1979, Terry Bradshaw threw four touchdown passes to lead the Pittsburgh Steelers to a 35-31 Super Bowl victory over the Dallas Cowboys. Bradshaw, named the game’s most valuable player, completed 17 of 30 passes for 318 yards. He had broken Bart Starr’s Super Bowl record of 250 yards passing by halftime.

Trivia answer: Soccer. Stewart had 10 goals and 12 assists for the Tribe from 1981 to ’83 and will be honored today in Philadelphia by the National Soccer Coaches Assn. of America.

And finally: Suspended Knick Antonio Davis says he went into the stands to protect his wife from a fan. The fan, 22-year-old Michael Axelrod, claims Davis’ wife, Kendra, tried to scratch him.

Of Davis, TNT’s John Thompson said, “Who’s to say he went into the stands to protect her. He might have been protecting the young man.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at [email protected].