So last year when baseball was acting like a complete BITCH, I started tuning into a little NASCAR. I'd always kind of liked it, followed Ricky Craven because he's from Maine, but never really got into it. I'd never watched a race start to finish, or tried to figure out how a "win" was come by.
But, once I started learning something about it, I've found it to be a pretty interesting "sport".
Here's a few good things about it.
1. It's like football -- schedule wise. It's always on Sunday -- you sort of get pumped up for it. Don't have to follow what's going on every single day, but you can. It picks up right after football and winds down right as football gets humming.
2. The TV coverage is excellent. This is high tech stuff. They have sensors on the drivers gauges, have a form of GPS that always knows exactly how fast they're going, how far behind the leader they are, how fast they're gaining on him. Remote crontrolled cameras in and outside the cars. They will cut into guys radio communications with the crew when they're having a problem. You just really get inside of it, moreso than with other sports.
3. Personalities. You got the college boys, the bad boys, the young guns, the cagey veterans, the boy wonders, and of course, the christians. There's someone for everyone to like, and dislike.
4. Racers, teams, owners, chiefs -- honestly, half the time talking about baseball or football is talking about the conflicts between owners and players and managers and all that. That's all still there in Nascar.
5. Technical -- man, those races are technical. The cars change performance as they lose gas, tires wear down, they get bumped. The drivers have to be able to communicate to their crew chiefs what's happening so that they can adjust springs, change a number of tires, change the tire pressure. Every adjustment in the pits takes more time and so has to be weighed against whether that time will be made up on the track. Guys will stay on the track while others pit to pick up the '5' for leading a lap, but at the cost of losing time by running an extra lap with a poor car (while the guys in the pits get the extra lap with a good car). Basically, there are just 100's of variables that these guys weigh as a race goes along. This is what I like best about it. Lots and lots of decisions, and every lap, a driver and team can learn something. The last thing that NASCAR is is just cars going around in circles.
6. I'm just a little sick of baseball and I need something to watch in the summer. Yanks and Atlanta all the time, though I did like that Angels squad last year. I'm a little sick of these beefed up players and the silly offense. But really, the non-stop labor/management bull shit is just crazy. It's every year, every single year. It's not like avoiding the strike last year is all of a sudden going to make them get along.
7. I know it's car racing, not a "sport", which might be some guys problem with it. That doesn't matter to me though. I don't need to watch something based on whether someone with a dictionary calls it a "sport" done by "athletes" or not. What it is -- it's still competition. It's just happens to be competition between a man/machine/team against another man/machine/team. And the interplay between all three is what really makes a race, and a season interesting.
8. This isn't really a reason to get into it, but it's just getting big, so don't miss out. On TV, I think its ratings are second only to football. Guys like Aikman/Staubach/Bradshaw are owning racing teams. I bet in 10-15 years, to own a team you're going to need a few hundered million (maybe not...teams don't get revenue from stadiums so it's not clear that a LOT can be made from owning a team, but better team = more sponsor money so you're going to see some big investment). Team owners are going to be known like Steinbrenner and Al Davis are known. You saw Jeff Gordon hosting SNL a few weeks ago. They're even talking about dropping Winston's sponsorship because of it being a tobacco company. I'm sure some of the older fans are disappointed with it getting mainstream, but there's a reason for it.
9. Forget 1-8. This is just fast, loud cars driving really close. 8000 rpms. 800 horse power. 200 mph. Heavy metal. 3 miles to the gallon. Awesome spectacular crashes. What's not to like?
10. That's it. Maybe by the end of the year, I'm sick of it, but I've been pretty intrigued since the Bud Shootout. I'm heading up to "The Sirius at the Glen" (formerly the "Bud at the Glen") this year to hang out with some fellas, swill some beers and watch some racing. That will be the first time I've seen it in person.
I'm still figuring out how to bet on it. There's several guys over in MOTOR SPORTS FORUM (and doesn't that need a new name? The TRI-OVAL? The Infield? Pit Row?
) that are far FAR more knowledgable than I. So far, I've seen good value in all three winston cup races. I haven't hit anything yet, but that's the way it goes with this. I need to find a book that does head-to-head matchups, too.
Any comments, agreement/disagreement welcome. TO all the disagreers, believe me, I was right there with you for years. But once I started following it, man, its a good sport.
But, once I started learning something about it, I've found it to be a pretty interesting "sport".
Here's a few good things about it.
1. It's like football -- schedule wise. It's always on Sunday -- you sort of get pumped up for it. Don't have to follow what's going on every single day, but you can. It picks up right after football and winds down right as football gets humming.
2. The TV coverage is excellent. This is high tech stuff. They have sensors on the drivers gauges, have a form of GPS that always knows exactly how fast they're going, how far behind the leader they are, how fast they're gaining on him. Remote crontrolled cameras in and outside the cars. They will cut into guys radio communications with the crew when they're having a problem. You just really get inside of it, moreso than with other sports.
3. Personalities. You got the college boys, the bad boys, the young guns, the cagey veterans, the boy wonders, and of course, the christians. There's someone for everyone to like, and dislike.
4. Racers, teams, owners, chiefs -- honestly, half the time talking about baseball or football is talking about the conflicts between owners and players and managers and all that. That's all still there in Nascar.
5. Technical -- man, those races are technical. The cars change performance as they lose gas, tires wear down, they get bumped. The drivers have to be able to communicate to their crew chiefs what's happening so that they can adjust springs, change a number of tires, change the tire pressure. Every adjustment in the pits takes more time and so has to be weighed against whether that time will be made up on the track. Guys will stay on the track while others pit to pick up the '5' for leading a lap, but at the cost of losing time by running an extra lap with a poor car (while the guys in the pits get the extra lap with a good car). Basically, there are just 100's of variables that these guys weigh as a race goes along. This is what I like best about it. Lots and lots of decisions, and every lap, a driver and team can learn something. The last thing that NASCAR is is just cars going around in circles.
6. I'm just a little sick of baseball and I need something to watch in the summer. Yanks and Atlanta all the time, though I did like that Angels squad last year. I'm a little sick of these beefed up players and the silly offense. But really, the non-stop labor/management bull shit is just crazy. It's every year, every single year. It's not like avoiding the strike last year is all of a sudden going to make them get along.
7. I know it's car racing, not a "sport", which might be some guys problem with it. That doesn't matter to me though. I don't need to watch something based on whether someone with a dictionary calls it a "sport" done by "athletes" or not. What it is -- it's still competition. It's just happens to be competition between a man/machine/team against another man/machine/team. And the interplay between all three is what really makes a race, and a season interesting.
8. This isn't really a reason to get into it, but it's just getting big, so don't miss out. On TV, I think its ratings are second only to football. Guys like Aikman/Staubach/Bradshaw are owning racing teams. I bet in 10-15 years, to own a team you're going to need a few hundered million (maybe not...teams don't get revenue from stadiums so it's not clear that a LOT can be made from owning a team, but better team = more sponsor money so you're going to see some big investment). Team owners are going to be known like Steinbrenner and Al Davis are known. You saw Jeff Gordon hosting SNL a few weeks ago. They're even talking about dropping Winston's sponsorship because of it being a tobacco company. I'm sure some of the older fans are disappointed with it getting mainstream, but there's a reason for it.
9. Forget 1-8. This is just fast, loud cars driving really close. 8000 rpms. 800 horse power. 200 mph. Heavy metal. 3 miles to the gallon. Awesome spectacular crashes. What's not to like?
10. That's it. Maybe by the end of the year, I'm sick of it, but I've been pretty intrigued since the Bud Shootout. I'm heading up to "The Sirius at the Glen" (formerly the "Bud at the Glen") this year to hang out with some fellas, swill some beers and watch some racing. That will be the first time I've seen it in person.
I'm still figuring out how to bet on it. There's several guys over in MOTOR SPORTS FORUM (and doesn't that need a new name? The TRI-OVAL? The Infield? Pit Row?
) that are far FAR more knowledgable than I. So far, I've seen good value in all three winston cup races. I haven't hit anything yet, but that's the way it goes with this. I need to find a book that does head-to-head matchups, too. Any comments, agreement/disagreement welcome. TO all the disagreers, believe me, I was right there with you for years. But once I started following it, man, its a good sport.
