NBC News analyst Bob Hager, who retired from the network in November 2004, is coming back to cover the Olympic Games as a "sports desk reporter" covering news around Torino, Italy. "Sounds like an odd assignment for someone who is basically retired and whose beat included aviation," an e-mailer said today. I thought so too -- but it turns out this will be Hager's fourth Olympics. According to NBC:

"Hager provided news reports during both the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics and the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games. Hager's Olympic broadcasting debut came as NBC's reporter based in West Germany during the 1972 Munich Games, where he covered the events associated with the Black September terrorist attack on the Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village. In 1996 he was scheduled to cover the 1996 Atlanta Games for NBC News when TWA Flight 800 crashed off Long Island and he was dispatched to cover that story."

Hager popped up on NBC and MSNBC last week covering the miners in WV...

> Update: 7:03pm: "Bob Hager is from the old school," an e-mailer says. "He's a classy and hardworking reporter who can do anything he's handed. It will be great to see him back on the air."