Pardon me if I’m not engulfed by tearful sentiment when some designated celebrity is shown carrying the Olympic flame, allegedly toward an opening ceremony for the Games.

I’m more likely to barf from the reality of such over-hyped, misunderstood smoke and fire. Consider the miserable source.

As the flame was about to end its 26-nation, 46,800-mile trip this week, people in Greece gathered along the route and cheered, as people have done so often in America. The final destination was Acropolis Hill in ancient Athens, site of the carnival. Said the mayor of one Athens suburb:

“The sacred flame is part of the soul of the Greek people. This is a historic moment for us. It’s our flame.” Baloney!

It was Adolph Hitler’s scurvy idea. Grisly show biz. Up to 1936 when the malignant little paperhanger engineered the Berlin Games to be a showcase for his beloved Third Reich and Aryan Nation, there was no Olympic flame. Neither in 776 B.C. at the start, nor in 1896 when the show was revived.

The “torch” was a propaganda tool for Hitler and his Killer Krauts. They also used the Games to set up a Nazi breeding farm to produce a crop of Olympic superbabies. Adolph had a symbolic Greek relay team help tote the torch in ’36, but it was his personal promo gimmick.

William Oscar Johnson of Sports Illustrated recounts: “The images are chilling: Swastikas on arms, a Nazi salute, the blood-red flag of the Third Reich. These were the Games of Adolph Hitler, his chance to spread the ugly religion of racial hatred — but they were also the games of a sharecropper’s son named Jesse Owens, who told a different tale.”

Jesse won an astounding four gold medals in the sprints and broad jump while Mr. Mustache cringed. Thank ya, Jesse, again.

According to Dr. Paul Martin, a respected Swiss surgeon and an honored Olympic runner who competed in five Games: “The Germans reserved a sort of heavenly forest near the Olympic Village … where the prettiest handpicked maidens would offer themselves to the athletes — especially to the good Aryan types. Before submitting to the Olympic ‘god’ of her choice, the girl would request her partner’s Olympic badge. In case of pregnancy, the girl would give this information to state or Red Cross maternities to prove the Olympic origin of her baby. Then the state would pay for the whole works.”

Some perks, huh, but we still beat their ‘purebred’ butts in World War II.

You can revere that Olympic torch all you want, but not this rabbit.

If there must be a Nazi-ignited torch, I think the U.S. planners blew it in 1984 at Los Angeles when a Jesse Owens descendant and ex-decathlete Rafer Johnson got the major flame carries. Why in the world didn’t they use Native American Billy Mills, the surprise 1964 10,000-meter winner in Tokyo, where still another gang of cruel warlords had instigated some trouble of consequence?

Billy’s forebears owned the joint before we immigrants ever showed up. In retrospect, I’m glad the heroic Mills didn’t dignify Hitler’s ghastly torch charade.

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Kansas University just hired Andrea Hudy as an associate strength and conditioning coach. How do I transition from that to the Olympics and North Carolina State, which beat the bejabbers out KU in football last December in the Tangerine Bowl?

Linkage: KU has made an honorable new hire. N.C. State did an abominable related thing. It now has the disgraced shot putter C.J. Hunter as a full-time assistant strength coach with Chuck Amato’s football team, conqueror of KU. Hunter and then-wife Marion Jones, sprinter-jumper, made 2000 Olympic headlines, Jones for her medals, Hunter for testing positive four times for steroid use.

He quickly retired from his sport rather than fight doping charges. Later he and Jones divorced. Hunter since has charged Marion also was a user and he gave her drug injections, which she denies. Case not closed yet.

So North Carolina State hires this tarnished muscle mass. Another zinger. The Raleigh News and Observer says Hunter sold his home in Raleigh to coach Amato for about $563,000 on Aug. 28, 2002. Question: Where do athletic director Lee Fowler and NCS chancellor Dr. Robert Barnhardt factor into this equation?

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Old Rush Limbaugh can fit and snort all he wants about politics. Entitled to his opinion, perverse, juvenile or not. But when this insecure egomaniac picks on Lawrence and KU with ill-informed snippets, the line’s in the sand. Sure, we can bitch and scream at each other, like family — but when an outsider from Missouri a la Rush gets tacky, time to drag out some dirty linen.

Perhaps you recall that Limbaugh back around 1980 and 1981 was director of group sales and public events for baseball’s Kansas City Royals. A fellow who was a top K.C. executive then said Rush came to his office two and three times a day seeking strokes, begging to be told how great he was. Needed constant reinforcement. Lordy, no wonder he moved on, with perhaps a little shove. Wasn’t even bright enough to set up major sales events in Lawrence, which was Royals-friendly in those days.

Wonder if Limbaugh and sprinter Maurice Greene, who adore themselves so much, have computerized mirrors in their dressing rooms wired to respond with “You are, Rush!” or “You are, Mo!” when they stand there and plead: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the greatest of them all?”

If Limbaugh couldn’t peddle scads of tickets in Lawrence when George Brett was in his prime and had a World Series-bound supporting cast, no wonder he’s bruised and resentful about our little community.