Forum Activity for @andy-denardi

So why DOESN'T Cup have team championships?

Current NASCAR

In today's column, Ed Hinton makes the analogy that the driver is the quarterback of the team, and that players in other sports can be substituted when they are hurt without affecting their chance for a championship.

I don't pay attention to NASCAR's team championship race but I assume that Hendrick gets to count all four cars. That's the way the manufacturer championship works. Now it used to be that the driver built his own car, so the driver championship encompassed more of the team concept. Even with hired drivers, teams mostly just had one car for the majority of races. Now of course, a team is up to four cars, with several satellites in some cases.

Few pay attention to anything other than the driver championship. Behind each winning driver is his engineers and pit crew that get little credit. There's also the current issue of drivers playing hurt in order to secure the championship. Why DON'T we replace the current driver and team championships with a real one for teams of one car?

Is it because ofKiekhaefer all the way back in the Fifties? It would certainly hurt job security for a driver if owners swapped people in and out depending on the track.But you could set a maximum number of drivers or swaps for the year. And it would encourage more drivers to start their own teams; the way it used to be.

updated by @andy-denardi: 12/05/16 04:04:08PM

Goodnight, Old Dominion Speedway; May Re-open in 2014 in New Location on I-95

Local and Regional Short Track Racing

As a driver you would be. But as a spectator it would be as real as what you see now. You'd just turn on your home TV/computer/entertainment system and it would be right there just as it is now. Probably no burning rubber smell though. As a driver, it probably would be much the same as it is now, except that you don't have to sit in rolling oven and it won't hurt when you hit the wall.

Computers and their graphics give a pretty good approximation of reality now. Twenty years from now, they'll be miles better. Besides, everyone will have become accustomed to and accepting of the appearance of computer graphics. It's happening now with movies and TV commercials. There's a lot more fakery out there than most people realize.

Virtual sports will be easier for everyone. No worries about weather or life-altering injuries. No municipal bonds floated to build a new sports stadium. Your home team will never be bought up and moved cross-country. No trainers or medical teams. No maintenance, cleanup, parking or insurance. No travel or equipment costs. Well actually, you'd still need to design stadiums, uniforms, etc, but you'd pay a programmer to do that and there would be no ongoing expenses beyond the creation.

Modern NASCAR computer games are very realistic. The interfaces vary from a hand-held joystick to multi-thousand dollar rigs with built in sound and vibration. A lot of the barriers that prevent a good driver from moving up today could be eliminated. In the case of stick-and-ball games, not all athleticism would be lost. Players might be rigged up with body sensors and pull all the moves of an actual game but in their living rooms.

Not all that I imagine will come true, but it is so much cheaper for sports team owners that I can't imagine them turning it down if virtual sports became possible. There's big money in virtual reality, but nobody has figured out how to exploit it yet. People didn't understand the benefits of watching TV on a 12"screen instead of going to the movies, but they came around. The future will be different, my friend. Maybe not better, but different. Just like today, some of it you'll like and some things will make you wish for the old days.

Goodnight, Old Dominion Speedway; May Re-open in 2014 in New Location on I-95

Local and Regional Short Track Racing

Someday within the next twenty years, the suburbs will have put an end to every virtually track in the country. The France family will have killed NASCAR by then, and EA Sports will control all motor racing in America with their online virtual series.

It will be cheaper for the fans and safer for the racers. If real racing sticks around long enough for the programmers to get the physics right, it will be just as good as the real thing. Don't be surprised if real football is gone too. Too many recruiting scandals, too many concussions and career-ending fractures. Basketball will die off from a combination of high player salaries and high felony arrest records.

Genuine baseball will survive; it's the American sport. But Soccer will be bigger.

Charlotte Sets Record

Current NASCAR

It's interesting that someone would complain about the sport going national. It created jobs and made many people rich, which is a good thing. It helped the Charlotte area a great deal and possibly North Carolina as a whole. But I understand your point.

It's the eternal irony of success. He much you have to give up in order to have so much. The price of fame.

I get annoyed when people who have been fans since the Nineties say how bad the sport has become. They don't know the half of it. It was already damaged then. Offhand, I don't know any sport that is better now than it was between 1955 and 1985. I guess that officially makes me an old codger.

Charlotte Sets Record

Current NASCAR

Hate to say it like that but NASCAR has to compete with College Football and NFL when we get later into the season and the Chase was put in to compete with that.

NASCAR just got 33% more money from Fox to run the first thirteen races. I assume that there's not a lot of concern for attendance when they can rake in cash from TV and race sponsors. There's been a lot of talk that people today have a short attention span; they need to be able to constantly switch between football and racing.

I don't think that's true. I think they've been told that over and over to the point where they're just doing what they've been told. I think that TV broadcasts, in trying to serve the short-attention span, do more and more annoying things that subconsciously drive viewers to seek a break from them. I no longer have TV but was fortunate enough to catch an illicit transmission of the Charlotte race. I could barely keep my eyes on the cars with all the distracting tickers and banners and logos popping up on screen. They reduce the race coverage by at least 25% just to fit all that junk in. I had to keep turning away because my eyes were tired from bouncing all over the screen.

Fans who attend races in person don't get to hear all those mentions of "a can of Sunoco fuel and four Goodyear tires".The networks (and NASCAR) get paid a lot of money for all that subliminal advertising. That tactic isn't as effective for fans in the bleachers, so agencies won't pay much for the privilege.

Auto racing already has higher attendance than the NFL or any other sport. They don't care about asses in the seats. Professional sports is an advertising delivery system and that's best done on TV. NASCAR doesn't want more fans, it wants more viewers. For decades, the Indy 500 has been the world's largest sporting event. The race pulls in fewer TV viewers than the Superbowl (and maybe the Daytona 500), so the series is relegated to the last five minutes of Sportscenter.

Charlotte Sets Record

Current NASCAR

We also discussed how folks get things autographed and then those items appear on e-bay a day or two later.

This of course, is why athletes charge for autographs and why they have become so hard to get. People aren't in it for the personal memory but for the money. I don't know who you blame for that attitude of greed. Ironically, if the drivers were willing to sign a lot of autographs, the supply would be great enough to drive the price down to the point where they weren't worth selling. I don't know what Petty's autograph goes for but with so many in circulation, it's probably much less than you'd expect for a seven-time champion.

The other solution would be to personalize each autograph with a name and comment pertaining to the meeting "Hey Bobby, hope that sunburn heals up quick". Personalized autographs always sell for less. It would take drivers longer to sign, and fewer would get a chance for one, but it beats none at all. Fans also would get a few more seconds of conversation with their idols. Most driver signings now are rushed and impersonal. And hey, maybe it would give drivers an idea that there's more to this sport than an having your own airplane.

My, how things have changed

General

We always had a private line as best as I can recall, but never understood my we had the letter prefixes or why they got ride of them. Either seems equally easy to remember. I guess they were a holdover from the six digit numbers that Patty recalls. Ours were TEmple and VOlunteer. There likely was another, maybe UL but I didn't know anyone who had it.These days they say that there aren't enough phone numbers to go around. It tickles me that it wasn't so long ago it was possible to have a 1 digit number. Well, it was long ago, but not to me. But some things never change. That old neighbor that never got off the phone? Now there are dozens of them everywhere I go. I can't imagine what's so important that people can't wait until they get out of the supermarket line. I only have a cell phone now, but it rarely leaves my house.

My, how things have changed

General

I was reading Biggy Bigelow's column at the Caledonian Record website. Biggy is in Vermont and writes about the racing scene in New England. I don't know anything about the cars and drivers but he's knowledgeable and enthusiastic and sometimes I need to get away from million dollar race cars and lose myself in the real auto racing.

The Milk Bowl is this weekend at Thunder Road, Ken Squier's track in Barre, VT, and one of the traditions is for former winners and their cars to make an appearance. This week's column had this tidbit about the the first winner in 1962.

I spoke to Denny about his old race car. I will give you a little history on the Dearborn saga in racing. Denny bought Ronnie Marvins car at the end of the 1961 season. He changed the car number to 7. That was his telephone number, as doctors and lawyers back in the day were reserved for numbers 1-10. This was before we had seven-digit numbers. Using a frame he bought in New York and a body he found in a river in Vermont, Denny put a car together and let Hard Luck race it as he was hurt and Harold was leading in points at that time."

Now back in 1962, I lived in a more metropolitan area and we had seven digit numbers. It was still rural enough that we had a few dairy farms within a mile radius but it was modern enough for supermarkets and department stores too. Anyone here still have an older number back then? I think most rural areas had a four digit number in the Fifties & Sixties. Our neighbors had a party line.

updated by @andy-denardi: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM

66 Years Ago on the "Real" Columbus Day

Stock Car Racing History

Ted Horn was before my time but Chris Economaki used to speak well of him. So I went to his Wikipedia page to get the full story and ran across this interesting tidbit:At 15 years of age Ted found work at the Los Angeles Times newspaper. On his way to work one day Ted was pulled over for speeding. Try as he might Ted could not get out of this situation easily. The policeman gave him a fairly unusual punishment for the infraction. The young man was to travel to a race track called San Jose Speedway where usually there were more cars than drivers, then find a willing car owner to let him drive. Once he got all the speed he had out of his system he could pick up his impounded car. He found a new passion in auto racing and would never "get the speed he had out of his system."Give that cop a cigar!

Dale, Jr. : "I Dont Even Want to go to Daytona and Talladega Next Year"

Current NASCAR

Those bastages got to Junior and he took back everything he said. I'm back to thinking he's an over-hyped lottery winner in the gene pool.

I believe NASCAR said there would be no more secret fines, so that's not how they castrated him. Rick Hendrick has NASCAR in the palm of his hand, so they didn't threaten the boss. They must have told him that they weren't going the throw the debris flag any more to let him get back on the lead lap.

I had strong hopes that he was going to give them the middle finger and refuse to run the Daytona 500. It would have been a powerful statement that would bring the heat down on Brian France.