ClayNation: One small step for lunacy, one giant leap for Clay

I'm jumping off a 30-foot platform into the Cumberland River in downtown Nashville on June 23. I will be jumping off inside a blimp made of PVC pipe replete with a large banner emblazoned CBS SportsLine.com ClayNation's Makin' it Rain.

Accompanying me on this jump will be my brother-in-law Jim, high school friend Ian Scott and at least one player to be named later. We're doing this all in the name of the Red Bull Flugtag competition. I'm told by those with more German language knowledge than I (basically everyone) that "flugtag" is German for "flight day."

The Flugtag began in 1991, when competitors in Austria first hurled themselves off platforms in their homemade flying machines. The Red Bull-sponsored Flugtag bounced around virtually every major city in Europe before arriving in America, in San Francisco in 2002. Since then competitors across our great nation have hurled themselves off platforms into the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and sundry other lakes, streams and rivers. Many of them have failed spectacularly. See for yourself.

Of course I didn't know any of this when my editor Roland Liwag e-mailed and suggested I participate in the Flugtag since it was taking place in my hometown. I have a bad habit of agreeing to pretty much anything on the spot. Red Bull even overlooked the fact that I once described drinking its product without liquor as "tasting like liquid exhaust fumes" and the liquid was "a dead ringer for urine in appearance." As usual my opinion was tasteful and subtle.

Now the Red Bull people and I are all made up and great friends. Either that or the people at Red Bull are aware I'm going to die in their contest and this is their revenge.

The ostensible goal of the Flugtag is to design a craft that is capable of flight. Unfortunately, our craft is not going to fly. Or even come close to flying. Instead we're going to jump off the platform and plummet to the welcoming embrace of the Cumberland River. A river, mind you, that no one I know has ever even so much as put their foot in.

The Cumberland is sort of like the Amazon of Middle Tennessee. No one has any idea what materials are floating in its depths. Partly that's because visibility under the surface is limited to roughly two inches. It's the only river I have ever seen where once you put your foot under water you can't even see your toes wiggling. This is vaguely alarming. Thank God there aren't any toothpick fish.

Our jump is made all the more alarming, however, based on the design of our craft. You see, my brother-in-law, who makes a living designing cars for Ford, sketched out a detailed plan for our craft.

Hand drawn sketch of the CBS SportsLine.com/SPiN/ClayNation Flugtag blimp.

Based on his drawings, I am the two feet in the front of this craft and he is the two feet in the back. We will be propelling our craft through the air via the modern flight miracle engine called "running and jumping." Then we will smash into the Cumberland River.

And, oh, here's the other thing: We have to perform a skit before we jump. Awesome, so we plummet to our deaths after humiliating ourselves with song and dance. This idea is so diabolical I'm surprised Robespierre didn't add this requirement to the guillotine during the French Revolution.

Worse, the past two skits I wrote and performed are from ninth-grade French and 10th-grade English. (Yes, for the record, I do spend every night thanking God that the tapes of those skits miraculously vanished before I graduated from Nashville's Martin Luther King Magnet).

Now I have to perform a skit on a floating stage in front of tens of thousands of people who will be crowding into downtown Nashville to watch this event. All of these people will have no idea who I am, will be drinking, and will be predisposed to hate me. I'm like a visiting minor league baseball player.

Do you think this PVC-blimp will fly?

At least the skit doesn't have to be in French, even if it does have to be "unoffensive." This might be a problem because in 10th-grade English the teacher deemed my skit so offensive that she made my team pay penance by writing another script that wasn't performed. So, yeah, this skit is going to work out great.

And, in the end, remember we have to launch ourselves off of a 30-foot platform, land in the Cumberland River, escape from our craft in the midst of a raging current, and not drown. This is all quite a lot to expect from someone like me, who is basically of middling athleticism (I have good aim) and has never jumped off a platform higher than 10 feet in his life. Fortunately, all of you get to experience my death or paralysis from the comfort of your computer screen. With video, to boot. Yep, we're taping this epic disaster. On June 23, my date with the Cumberland River arrives. I just hope I see the sunshine on June 24.