I am not, in any certain terms, a sports fan of any type. I don’t follow football, baseball, golf, hockey, basketball, wrestling, or nude dwarf throwing. The reasons for my sports apathy are pretty simple. Most of it is boring. Most of it involves whiny, overpaid players who usually have trouble putting together a complete sentence during interviews. These are players who are supposed to be role models. But instead, they don’t report to training camp because they want $15 million a year instead of the $ 12 million offered. I could go on about the reasons for my non-interest, but this is about something that happened to me today concerning a sport that has the fastest growing fan base of any of them. I may have actually “discovered” a sport that interests me to the point that I plan to follow the schedule and look forward to watching these events.
These sporting events take place in venues with names like Darlington, Richmond, Talladega...and Daytona. With player names like Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne, Scott Riggs...and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. It’s called NASCAR.
Today was the Daytona 500...the crown jewel of this sport. No...the biggest, richest NASCAR event is not the culmination of the season, it is the start of the season. The total purse for this one race is $18.3 million. Today's winner (Kevin Harvick) and his team will pocket $1.44 million, plus the prestige of passing the finish line first at this premier event. And there is a lot of prestige and pride surrounding this sport...even more than some of the other professional sports involving balls or pucks.
Maybe part of my new-found attraction to NASCAR racing is more of a rediscovery. As a teenager, my buddy Bob and I were totally into the whole Formula One racing scene. The 1966 film Grand Prix sparked my infatuation with racing. Bob and I could name names back then. Names like Jackie Stewart, Dan Gurney, and Graham Hill meant something to us. Auto makers like Ferrari, Lotus, and BRM built Formula One cars to race on circuits around the world. Nurburgring Germany, Monte Carlo, and Monza Italy are still part of the F-1 circuit today. Formula One was (and still is to some extent) the most glamorous of all auto racing formats. The popularity of NASCAR is at an all time high. And you don’t have to be a resident of Alabama or Kentucky to admit that you are a fan any longer.
I think one of the reasons for my new interest lies in the fact that we can now watch these racing events on HD plasma TV with surround sound. And that is what I did today. It was completely enthralling, I bought into it. The race ended with the winning car passing the finish line at 185 mph just 2 feet ahead of the 2nd place guy (who had been leading for most of the last part of the race). At the same time, a half dozen cars piled up behind the leaders with one driver crossing the finish line sliding upside down and on fire! No one was injured during this Daytona 500, save for a poor member of the one of the pit crews who had his ankle run over during a pit stop.
There were more than 90 cameras covering Foxe’s broadcast of the Daytona 500. Most every car had a camera in it during the race. There are unmanned track level cameras at the turns, cameras in blimps, and moving cameras on wires suspended over the track itself. What you get to see now is as close to being at the race track as you can possibly be. It was a very enjoyable and surprising experience for me...the un-sports fan.
Am I a NASCAR fan now? Maybe so. The next race is in this series, called the Nextel Cup, is the Auto Club 500 from the California Speedway next Sunday. I’ll be watching it on Fox at 12:30 PST on my HD plasma TV. Will I buy a NASCAR ball cap or jacket with my favorite driver’s number on it. Probably not. I drive a ‘69 Porsche...and I haven’t fit the bill for one of those ball caps yet!
It’s a kick-ass, testosterone laden sport that isn’t for everybody. In fact, I am sure that some people wold argue that it is a sport at all. All I know is that I may have actually found something that qualifies me as a sports fan.
Now...I need to follow through with my pledge to get back into fly fishing this Spring. We’re heading up to the Knight’s Ferry Stanislaus River Trail again tomorrow. It will be a camera picnic of sorts. I’ll be scouting the fly fishing spots as well.
