OMAHA, Neb. - We have some major catching up to here in the blog, going back a couple weeks to the San Diego Marathon, which I may or may not have finished. (I kinda blacked out the last 8 miles or so.) Also, we need to talk about what happened in Tempe, Ariz., last week when the Fresno State baseball team somehow crawled out of the Jedi pit and won the Super Regional. That's the only way I can describe it. They were at least halfway into the pit. You know, the one that eats people in "Return of the Jedi," the scene* probably better known as the one with Princess Leia tied to Jabba the hut by a chain, and more importantly, wearing the metal bikini.

*OK, I am admittedly not any kind of "Star Wars" expert. Sadly, I can remember scenes, but not always which scenes go with which episode. So I did a little research for details. Apparently the "pit" as I naively call it, is a living organism called the Sarlacc. It's down in a hole, its mouth open as wide as the pit, waiting for Luke Skywalker to light-saber bad guys so they will drop in for dinner ... so to speak. In the scene I'm referring to, the pit has a name, too, the Great Pit of Carkoon. This all happens on the planet Tatooine. The woman who wrote the Harry Potter books should have to pay George Lucas some sort of royalties because he invented the idea of unnecessarily naming things in a made-up language.

The Lakers lost to the Celtics on Thursday. They're down three games to one, needing to win three in a row, the last two in Boston, and even their situation looks better than the Dogs in Tempe. The Bulldogs were down zero games to one in a three-game series to unbeatable Arizona State, at the Sun Devils home field, without their best pitcher, and somehow won two in a row and advanced to the College World Series. I'm still not exactly sure how it happened and I was there. Then again, I'm still trying to figure out how Fresno State got to the Super Regional in the first place.

So this was Day 1 of my first College World Series experience as a reporter rather than a spectator*. It was, without a doubt, one of the longest days of my life. I flew out of Fresno at 5:42 a.m., had two layovers, one in San Francisco, another in Denver, which if you've never been there, feels a little like the Mall of America, only with more people. Also, no roller coaster. I landed in Omaha on the same flight as Bee reporter B.J. Anteola, also known as Bryant-Jon Anteola. We got off the plane. We picked up our luggage alongside ESPN sideline reporter Erin Andrews. I wish there was some fun story here, like Erin going all nutso on a Avis employee because her rental car was the wrong shade of maroon, but alas, she seemed nice. No idea why I feel the need to report to you my "celebrity" encounters, but I do. Just play along.

*This is the most boring asterisk of all time, but for two years I attended Creighton University, which is in downtown Omaha. That's it. Had some great times there. Still have a couple friends in Omaha, and hopefully I'll get to spend a little time with them this week. Unfortunately, they have real jobs and wives and children and stuff, so we'll see if it works out. Not eveyone gets to follow a baseball team around the country and get paid to watch it.

I spent the afternoon finding the area of Omaha that was hit Sunday morning by a tornado. It's in a southwestern suburb called Millard. There is no huge area of destruction, just a lot of naturally trimmed trees and twisted fences and piles of debris. There is one neighborhood that had some pretty significant damage to houses. Enormous sections of roofs were missing. Garage doors were gone. Chimneys had been toppled. A lot of people were outside, though, especially the houses with major damage, sitting on their front steps or in their garages, enjoying a beautiful midwestern day. That's where I found the three men who appeared in Friday's column. It's all about the chaotic weather that's been going on in eastern Nebraska the last couple weeks.

Of all the complaints I hear about my sports columns, is they often don't focus on sports. (Let's hope those people don't read this blog.) This one probably falls into that category, but the Fresno State baseball team tried to fly into Omaha on a chartered jet the same evening as four Boy Scouts were killed 45 miles north of the city. Scary stuff. The pilot actually had to divert the Fresno State flight to Lincoln instead, and the team made the hour drive from there on a charter bus. I've only gotten pitcher Holden Sprague's version of that plane ride most of the way across Nebraska, but it was pretty bad. Before we landed in Omaha Thursday, Erik Wetzel described to a reporter how the jet they were in fell so far in the sky that his laptop went four feet up in the air. That's scary turbulence.

On Friday, the Bulldogs will practice in the afternoon, and if I don't go to bed soon, I'm never going to get up in time. I'm hoping there's some sort of College World Series museum somewhere, because I'd love for my next column to be about the history of the event. We'll see what I can find.