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There is only ONE Oklahoma
SOONERS
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Monday, November 13, 2006

Its Deer Hunting season in Va, and we know what that means

For the "Southern Gentleman", it means 'mailing it in', for the last 5 or so races of the season.

I noticed a trend a few years ago of average to poor finishes late in seasons for ESad, but never really put two and two together until a friend mentioned some of his quotes about 'its almost deer season, and I am ready for that'. Heck, even his Fan Club Forum has a thread dedicated to the 'countdown to deer season'.

In eights seasons in Cup the 'countdown to deer season' (AKA the last five races of the season) is painfully obvious;

'99 20th Average finish 0 top 10s 0 top 5s
'00 27th Average finish 0 top 10s 0 top 5s
'01 27th Average finish 0 top 10s 0 top 5s
'02 17th Average finish 2 top 10s 0 top 5s
'03 21st Average finish 0 top 10s 0 top 5s
'04 33rd Average finish 0 top 10s 0 top 5s (Chase year)
'05 16th Average finish 2 top 10s 0 top 5s
'06 28th Average finish 0 top 10s 0 top 5s (after 4 races)


The total average in 8 seasons of the last five races is 24th with only 4 top 10s in 39 attempts and zero top 5s. So much for the 'bounce in the step', the Southern Gentleman claimed he was going to have for switching teams.

So grow that scruffy facial hair Elliott and get those dogs ready (is that really 'hunting' anyway?) as its 'deer season', and that means focus issues on the track, and mailing in your efforts.

2 comments:

Snafam said...

Hunting with packs of dogs makes me want to shudder. It is one thing to use dogs to flush out the critters, or to retrieve them after they are shot. But the whole chase down the critter, terrorize it, corner it, and then shoot it...........well, I am not sure how sportsmanlike that is. But, I guess it makes it easier on the hunters!

(Didn't Great Britain outlaw hunting of foxes with packs of dogs?) (Wait, this is one of those Southern things, isn't it! My bad! That makes it all ok! Gotta keep up with tradition!)

Jamie said...

Last year he was about 50 points out of 11th with 3 races to go. He showed up at TMS with the beard and all he talked about was looking forward to getting in the woods with the dogs etc etc.

What about getting to NYC for 11th? Still had a very legit shot at it. Nope. Not interested. Think his sponsor would have liked that? Yeah

As for the running the dogs. Many hunters I know frown very badly no that practice and so do many hunt clubs. They don't believe that is very sporting at all.