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David Spates NASCAR and hockey need Driving 500 miles in a circle is a sure cure
for insomnia. Do you know what would make NASCAR entertaining
for me? Inspired by "the most exciting two minutes in sports"
last weekend, I've decided that NASCAR needs to take a cue from
horse racing line those guys up side by side and give them
one lap. You can make the lap as long as you'd like. The race
in Daytona would last a minute or so. The races at dinky tracks
like Bristol's and Richmond's would be over significantly quicker. One lap is all you'd need. Whoever crosses
the finish line first is the winner. The losers, well, they'll
have a nice career peering out from the inside of an Alpo can. NASCAR also should install betting windows
at all of its race tracks. It would be a great way of letting
a fan show real support for his favorite driver let him
put his money where his mouth is. The drivers would be handicapped,
just as in horse racing. Instead of spending this month's rent
money on lottery tickets for tonight's drawing of The Big Game,
you could instead place bets on Jeff Gordon to win, place or
show. The odds sure would be a lot better. I believe the odds
of winning The Big Game multistate lottery is approximately 76
million to 1. I'm sure Gordon would draw much better odds than
that, say 7 to 1 or so. The payoff wouldn't be nearly that of
the lottery, but hey, that's life at the track. Now I know these changes would lead to some
serious problems for NASCAR crews. With just one lap to race,
you sure don't need a pit crew. If a driver's car blows up around
turn No. 3, his day is pretty much done. I suppose the pit crew
guys would have to find vocation in other areas. The guy who
fills the gas tank could work at the BP full-service pump, and
the dude who squeegees the window might have to take his skills
to New York City or some other metropolitan area. I hear window
cleaners there do pretty well for themselves. I've got suggestions for other sports as well. In hockey, I think the fights should have
more of an outcome on the game than just penalty minutes. If
a player scores a knockout, that should automatically count as
a goal. It would sure make hockey more exciting, wouldn't it?
Rather than just a couple of pasty-faced guys pulling each other's
shirts over his head and punching like blind kangaroos, bring
Mills Lane to center ice and let him referee the fight. If neither
player can score a KO after a couple of minutes, then return
to the hockey game. When the Stanley Cup championship series
is going on, you could have that "Let's get ready to rumble"
guy announce the lineups. In baseball, the fences obviously need to
be moved out about 80 feet. I know fans like home runs, but things
have gotten rather ridiculous. Today's baseball players dwarf
the players of yesteryear, and yet the fields remain the same
size. If you put Sammy Sosa or Mark McGwire up against Hank Aaron,
you'd never guess all three had baseball as a common thread.
Instead, you might suspect Sosa and McGwire were professional
wrestlers and Aaron, even in his prime, was a professional bowler.
The fields simply cannot hold these monsters to a reasonable
number of home runs. Add in factors like baseballs more juiced
than Minute Maid and pitching talent thinner than Calista Flockhart
after a weekend of bingeing and purging, and it's no wonder that
outfielders are watching balls soar farther than Bobby Knight's
chair during a technical foul free throw. I'm sure there would be ways to jazz up Australian-rules football, but I don't understand that game as it is. I remember playing a similar game when I was a kid. It was called Beat The Snot Out Of The Guy With The Ball. Now THAT was a great game. |