What's it like to skate inside a football stadium?

PITTSBURGH - So what is it like to skate inside a football stadium?

Lace 'em up underneath the stands at Heinz Field, as the NHL allowed the media to do Thursday. Walk past the Pittsburgh Steelers' locker room - the Pittsburgh Penguins' dressing room for Saturday's Winter Classic against the Washington Capitals. Go down a ramp, up some steps and into the yawning bowl of yellow seats.

Step onto the ice.

I could compare it to playing pond hockey growing up in suburban Detroit, riding my bike through the subdivision with my skates and stick on my handlebars, playing until my ears got crunchy from the cold, then riding home to thaw out.

I could compare it to practicing on an outdoor rink with my youth team, wearing baseball batting gloves under my hockey gloves and a cutoff hockey sock under my helmet to keep warm, the ice never better than outside at 6 o'clock on a frigid Michigan morning.

I could compare it to skating in an NHL arena or standing on the field for a Steelers game, both of which I have had the good fortune to do in my career as a sportswriter.

But it wasn't quite like any of those things.

The Winter Classic romanticizes the game's roots. To those who have played outdoor hockey -- if only shinny on a backyard rink -- it does back memories. It also melds hockey with a baseball or football atmosphere, depending on where it is played. (That really was Steelers great Franco Harris standing there by the rink Thursday.)

Yet it's unique, a big event all its own. It's unlike anything you can experience elsewhere. That's why it has carved a niche for itself among American sports fans, drawing a TV audience for hockey on a day that used to be reserved for college football. And that's why it's worth the NHL's effort, even though there is a risk that the weather can break it as well as make it.

For me, this was most striking thing as I skated around Heinz Field for 45 minutes: From the ice, it doesn't feel forced. You can't see the gaps between the rink and the stands -- that it's a hockey rink temporarily installed on a football field. The seats seem to descend to the top of the boards. It feels almost natural, almost like the rink was there first and the seats were made to surround it. At the same time, it's surreal, seeing those thousands of seats blur past, looking up at the last rows towering so high above, spotting a snippet of the Pittsburgh skyline past the scoreboard at the open end of the stadium.

The second most striking thing: It wasn't nearly as cold as any other time I've skated outside. The temperature was in the high 40s. But while the refrigerated ice wasn't great to start -- and became soft and rutted toward the end of the session -- it wasn't terrible. It wasn't much different than a public skate at your local arena.

The big worry for Saturday isn't the temperature but rain. The forecast calls for a high of 49 degrees and an 80 percent chance of precipitation. NHL chief operating officer John Collins smiled, saying the league plans to play at 1 p.m. as scheduled and expects to get the game in, though it could be delayed Saturday or postponed until Sunday.

The NHL can't control the weather but will do whatever it can to put on the show. There's too much at stake -- from the TV deals to the sponsorships to the teams' scheduling to all the people traveling for the game. I'm sure the players want to get on the ice, too, purely for the fun of it. I didn't want to get off.

Audrina Patridge Simone Mütherthies Carrie Underwood Rosario Dawson Tricia Helfer