Not that long ago, instead of sitting at my desktop composing this blog entry late Sunday afternoon, I’d have been immersed in the IndyCar race at Portland.
I’d also have been anticipating the start of the NASCAR playoffs later at Darlington, S.C., and possibly figuring how I’d slip in some viewership of tonight’s Florida State-LSU college football game.
But I’ve changed.
Already today, I’ve mowed my son’s grass, then got back home and took the Mustang convertible out for a ride under threatening skies.
I returned, cleaned up, and called a local outlet of a national sporting goods chain to make sure my online coupon would be good for the purchase of a ridiculously inexpensive 12-gauge shotgun. Told it was, I then prepared to leave to make said purchase.
Before I left, the wife wanted to know if I would like her to DVR the Indy race for me. No, I said, with a few expletives thrown in for emphasis.
Once, sports provided refuge from the sadness of everyday existence in this troubled world. These days, it merely mirrors society and that strips away a major attraction.
Consider IndyCar racing, in which the powers that be went from being just plain inept in managing races, to now throwing a cloud of suspicion as to their neutrality. It seems to me that certain drivers and certain teams get a lot of timely breaks/calls.
It’s a lot like how Democrats can run roughshod over the law and suffer little in the way of punishment, while Republicans can go to jail for blowing their noses in the wrong jurisdiction.
So it is with IndyCar, which is willing to overlook transgressions such as leaving the pit with equipment still attached, as long as it is a favored person doing so.
Similarly, the display of yellow flags too often seems to occur so as to benefit those chosen ones who have gone off-strategy in terms of pit stops to make up for poor qualifying or poor performance in the actual race to that point.
Throw in the ridiculous practice, shared by NASCAR, of randomly getting lapped cars back on the lead lap, where they might further interfere with drivers and cars having a legitimate chance at winning, and you have racing that is more like selection of a winner than a contest of speed.
NASCAR, in its not-so-infinite-wisdom, divides its races into stages, in which if a driver wants to win an early stage and pick up the points, he’s likely forfeiting the chance to win the race because all the smart teams come in a few laps before the end of the stage. That way, when the next stage begins and cars who stayed out need to pit, the cars who did this before the end of the previous stage are near the front.
NASCAR has screwed the pooch in other ways, and while today’s race is a reported sellout, many traditional NASCAR races – such as Bristol – are conducted before a sprinkling of fans where once there were waiting lists for tickets.
I’ve taken to watching Formula One racing because the best drivers and fastest cars tend to win, not disappear into a mishmash of caution periods for “debris on the track” and the like.
By the way, if you know who won today’s Formula One race don’t tell me. I’m watching a replay later.
I’m not alone in this disdain for domestic auto racing. Both a cousin and my brother can hardly stomach it any longer, where once they were devoted fans.
My solution is to avoid wasting my time watching it. I will check the results, just out of habit.
I still might tune in to watch a bit of that college football game later, although watching snippets of games in recent days indicates it’s more of the same in that sport, unfortunately.
The SEC will win another national championship. The best Pac-12 teams continue to play softer than tissue paper when they’re up against top teams. The Big Ten will continue to be over-rated. The Big 12 will continue to be a triumph of style over substance. The ACC? Nothing special now that Clemson has declined a bit.
The college game has been all but ruined by ongoing conference realignment, and the proliferation of transfers.
Oregon had transfer players filling most of the starting positions against Georgia. Considering the 49-3 pounding the Pac-12 Ducks absorbed from an SEC power, maybe they should have been 22-for-22 with transfers, throwing in a transfer punter and kicker to boot (pun intended).
Both Pitt and West Virginia had starting quarterbacks from elsewhere when the two former rivals finally got around to playing each other again last week, in what was a sloppy, sloppy game.
By the way, that is West Virginia of the Big 12 (think Great Plains), which makes almost as much sense as UCLA and USC joining the Big Ten down the line.
Bad as it has become, big-time college football still is preferable to the two main homegrown auto racing series. But that is damning college football with faint praise.
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