The Times has prided itself on coverage of the politics and behind-the-scenes manuevers in the Olympics movement since Ken Reich started on the beat before the 1984 Games here. Reporter Alan Abrahamson re-defined the beat in recent years, flying all around the world to break stories. If you wondered, then, why the Chicago Tribune's Phil Hersh had the best recent update on the prospects for Los Angeles getting the Games again in 2016 — as David Davis points out down below — it's because Abrahamson has taken his act to NBC. This week's flurry of publicity about network coverage of the National Football League finds Abrahamson integral to the team at NBCSports.com:

Alan Abrahamson – Columnist Abrahamson was a longtime and award-winning Olympics reporter and investigative sports journalist for the Los Angeles Times. He also served as a reporter for NBC's 2004 and 2006 Olympic coverage. Abrahamson began his career as a news journalist. He covered the Menendez brothers murder trial in Los Angeles and the Betty Broderick murder trial in San Diego for the Los Angeles Times. In the midst of the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial he wrote "Mistrial of the Century" with Tracy and Judy Kennedy.

In 2001, Abrahamson won the Associated Press Sports Editors award for enterprise reporting for his role in a seven-part series covering the workings of the Olympic movement and various groups associated with the Olympic Games. In 2004, he was the sole U.S. winner of the International Olympic Committee's Sport and Media Award and was named the Los Angeles Press Club's Southern California "Sports Journalist of the Year."

Even while at the Times, Abrahamson helped out on NBC's Olympics coverage. The network will broadcast the 2008 Games from Beijing so expect him to be in the thick of that.

Also of note: Pioneering baseball blogger Aaron Gleeman, a founder of The Hardball Times, is also part of the ramping up at NBCSports.com. He blogs about the process of getting hired.