The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
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DAILY SPORTS BREAKS DOWN THE WEEKEND THAT WAS
2B - Monday, March 5, 2007
SAID AND HEARD
"Slipups like we had at the end of
(Saturday) cost us the season."
- Michigan center COURTNEY SIMS on the team's 65-
61 loss to No.1 Ohio State last weekend. The Wolverines
held a six-point lead with four minutes remaining, but
failed to score the rest of the way.
ATHLETE OF THE WEEK
ERIN WEBSTER
WOMEN'S TRACK AND FIELD
The senior won the 3,000- and 5,000-meter
runs during the Big Ten Indoor Champion-
ships, and Michigan placed second in the team
standings. The All-American is just the second
Wolverine in history to claim both events.
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Filling my Sunday void
a
At the end of January, I
relinquished my role as
managing sports editor of
the Daily. This added something to
my schedule
that they tell
me is called '
"free time."
Unfamil-
iar with this
concept of a
wide-open
Sunday, I
quickly set
about filling
it up. Wake J
up, read the JACK
newspaper, HERMAN
shower, Daily,
eat lunch and
then what? In the fall, football
would make this decision easy.
Now, I needed help. Feb. 18, I
got it.
The Daytona 500 was on, and
I couldn't let the chance to watch
America's biggest race (and to stop
studying business statistics) pass
me by.
In one of the closest finishes
ever at the Daytona 500, Kevin
Harvick passed Mark Martin on
the final lap and beat him to the
finish line by .02 seconds. The end-
ing prevented Martin, one of the
sport's most respected racers, from
winning his first Daytona 500 and
capped off a crazy day of racing
that amazed even the veterans.
"I've seen a lot of these Daytona
500s, and this has to be the wildest
Daytona 500 I've ever watched,"
said Richard Childress, Harvick's
team owner..
I'm willing to defer to the man
who drove in the race from 1970
to 1981 and has owned one of the
sport's most successful teams ever
since.
Suddenly intrigued by Amer-
ica's second-most popular sport,
I started researching like any
Northeasterner with no knowl-
edge of it might do; I read Tom
Wolfe's famous piece about the
whisky-runnin'-bootleg-turnin'
rebel turned Nascar-drivin'-hard-
chargin' rebel Junior Johnson,
followed coverage in the New
York Times, and joined a fantasy
league. I could not, however, find a
sponsor (Just imagine the Sports-
Monday Column brought to you by
your company here).
I then listened to the com-
plaints.
My 14-year-old brother, for
instance, devised the oh-so-clever
argument that the sport is essen-
tially cars making left turn after
left turn after left turn for four
hours. But I also like watching
middle-aged men use metal sticks
to smack a tiny white ball around a
field, so the idea of roaring engines
and blazing speeds is actually
quite exciting. And exclamations
like, "Tires are smoking, sheet
metal is dragging and they're still
racing with six laps left," as one
announcer proclaimed during
the Daytona 500, sure help spice
things up.
Others told me to disregard the
sportbecause of its lack of sophis-
tication ("Talladega Nights" cer-
tainly didn't help this perception).
But; if you've ever looked inside
one of the cars you'd find they're
more complex than Dr. Brown's
Delorean, as the sport has evolved
since its days of un-modified cars
racing around dirt tracks.
One charge I did accept was
about the drivers' rebel mentality.
In baseball, cheating prompts Con-
gressional hearings. In Nascar, it's
said that "If you ain't cheatin', you
ain't trying." I certainly don't con-
done those actions (and neither do
racing officials, as they penalized
a number of drivers before Day-
tona), but the attitude is somewhat
refreshing in a time when people
take sports a little too seriously.
It's also the attitude that helps
endear the sport to its millions of
fans. It's fun watching these guys
speed around Daytona Interna-
tional knowing they'd be just as
comfortable - and competitive
- driving around the figure-8
track at Bob's Go-Kart World.
Some might be in it for the
money, but salaries are more pro-
tected than the names of under-
cover CIA agents (um, on second
thought, so is the money hidden
beneath my mattress). This lack of
any quantifiable numbers - stats
like Kobe Bryant making $3121.94
per minute played - allows the
stars to maintain their status as
beer-guzzling, blue-collar, local
diner-eating kind of guys.
This is not to say Nascar is all
fun and gear-shifting. There are
some serious problems witn tne
sport. Allowing the best drivers
to participate in Busch Series
events on Saturday would be the
equivalent of letting major league
baseball players moonlight in the
minors, and Al Gore likely won't
be handing out any environmen-
tal awards to the sport anytime
soon. But if you can overlook these
quirks, you'll have a sport worth
watching.
I'll update you during the sea-
son, through our blog on Michi-
gandaily.com or in columns, at
least until my editor yells at me for
writing too much about NASCAR
(That might be after he reads the
first line of this one).
But until then, I won't worry
about that little thing called free
time.
- Herman can be reached
at jaherman@umich.edu.
_________________________i_______
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