A Slow Wednesday

Nascar has forgotten it’s common fan?
Maybe, maybe not, but one thing is for certain is that the NFL obviously has. With the recent announcement of North Texas hosting the Super Bowl in 2011, also came the speculation of the face value for tickets to attend this grand event. This year’s Super Bowl ticket is $600. Tickets for ‘Super Bowl 45’ will be at a minimum of $900 a seat, and may go as high as $1000. I wonder how many actual ‘NFL season ticket holders’ will be able to attend this event in 2011? My guess is not very many. While the ‘old guard’ Nascar fan still complains about the rising ticket prices and how ‘corporate America’ is taking over the sport, I have yet to see any significant jump in ticket prices for the Daytona 500 that is not in line with inflation and the value of a dollar.


The C.O.T. to go full time in 2008:
This can only be a good thing for the sport and will help the lesser-funded teams like this program was designed to do. A ‘did you know’ comes from the 31 team where they have run the same chassis in 4 of the 5 C.O.T. races. What maybe more important, is that they have managed a top ten in C.O.T. race points. Imagine running the same chassis at Bristol and Richmond which is something that is unheard of with the ‘car of today’.

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure:
The latest item to be auctioned by the Sadler Foundation is a pair of “2007 Puma racing shoes worn in NASCAR events by Elliott Sadler various times during the first 10 races of the 2007 season”. With a little over four days left in the bidding, this pair of used shoes is getting $325 for the highest bid. That is pretty amazing for a pair of shoes that only garnered one top 10 finish (at a plate track) and an average finish of 21st. I guess the old saying is true; one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Hope the item comes with a few boxes of baking soda!

No room in the Inn:
So Rick Hendrick is the first owner to publicly state that there is no room for Dale JR on his race team. This may or may not be the case, but I wonder if Hendrick really didn’t want to go with a potential PR mess when JR ‘demands’ 51% of RHR in 5 or 6 years. Realistically, there is only one place for JR next year, and that is driving the 33 car for Richard Childress.

Tony Stewart is grinning:
One has to think that Tony Stewart has to be secretly grinning over the performance of Juan Pablo’s first 10 races. JPM has been called a ‘weapon’, and ‘wreck waiting to happen’, and a few other things. But I remember the same things said about Tony his first few years in Cup as well. A few years after that, Tony was holding up the Cup on the big stage in NYC.

Take it too the bank:
Got a chance to see the Nextel East/West series on HDTV last weekend and while the racing was good, the race venue was even better. The Iowa Speedway is doing it ‘right’. They are not trying to over build before the track surface has matured, but built a ‘race track’ first, then built facilities around it. Next step I’m thinking we will see a Craftsman’s Truck Race at Iowa in a year or so, and I would not be surprised in 4 or 5 years see a CUP/Busch weekend there. The 7/8 mile bank tri-oval may actually be ‘better’ racing right now than Richmond.

Programmer's note:
Its the LOST season three finale tonight. and then many of us LOSTies can speculate till January of 2008 about what is going to happen on the island. Oh the humanity of it all.