Here's a clip of Phelpsy doing his first major interview since Bong-gate -- it's a sit-down with Matt Lauer that'll air later this morning on The Today Show.

"I had no idea really what to do," Phelps said, referring to the moment when he learned that a photograph of him holding a bong surfaced in a British tabloid on Jan. 31. "I knew that I'd made a mistake and made a bad judgment," Phelps said. "And…I know that when you do make a mistake…you're responsible for all of the consequences. And I was willing to, you know, accept the fact that I did make a mistake." ... The 23-year-old athlete said that the hardest part of the ordeal was knowing he had hurt and disappointed, not only his fans, but the people closest to him, as well. "The contract side of things, yeah, I was disappointed. But, you know, I think the biggest thing is who I hurt the most. Like, if I lost money, OK. It's not an issue with me." Kellogg, which dropped Phelps last month, reasoning that the swim champ's behavior was "not consistent with the image of Kellogg," recently donated thousands of boxes of cereal boasting Phelps' picture to a San Francisco food bank. As for the night he unwittingly posed for the infamous bong pic, Phelps says he knew most of the guests at the party and there were only six or seven people there altogether. "It was just a small group and we were just sitting around and celebrating," he said. "People think, you know, it's funny at times" to take an impromptu cell phone picture, Phelps said. "I'll say that there are a lot of people out there who want to take advantage of any situation they have...I trusted my friends who were there, who they were. "And clearly they weren't [trustworthy] people...Sometimes you learn the hard way."

This short clip just has Phelpsy talking about how he's gonna get his image back, and he talks about how he's just going to get back into training, because "I can't do anything wrong once I'm in the pool." That's so, so true, Mikey. In the pool, you're wearing goggles, and most of that face of yours is distorted by the water anyway. We can, as a nation, focus on what we need to see, and the true glory that is Michael Phelps: your penis. Seriously though I hate to keep harping on this, but why is this whole country trying to figure out how Michael Phelps is going to rehabilitate his image after losing alllll public trust by smoking a bong, yet no one wants to talk about how Chris Brown is quietly, rapidly and successfully rehabilitating his image after beating up his girlfriend? I AM GOING TO BE TALKING ABOUT IT, FOLKS. We won't be forgetting around here, no sirree. />.msnbcLinks {font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;} .msnbcLinks a {text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px;} .msnbcLinks a:link, .msnbcLinks a:visited {color: #5799db !important;} .msnbcLinks a:hover, .msnbcLinks a:active {color:#CC0000 !important;} Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the...