Blog June 2008

Blog June 2008

  • Indy Car Series – One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
    • Jun 30, 2008
    • Blog

    Unless some of the Saturday night hot-shots start getting some time in the IndyCar feeder series we are soon going to see the Indy Car TV ratings and attendance numbers go the same direction as the zipper on Danica’s firesuit.

  • Biffle: Future Part-Time Ride Just A Pipe Dream
    • Jun 27, 2008
    • Blog

    Fulfilling the sponsor obligations of the current contract can make inking the next one darn near impossible.

    “Absolutely. If you can’t get to the office, there’s no way you can sit down and work out details,” said Biffle, who added that the deal might have gotten done this week if not for the trip to LI. “So that’s been one of our things. In May, I had one day off in May. We had something going every day. So it makes it difficult to actually get to sit down and think about it and look it over.”

  • Unified Indy Car Series Half-Year Progress Report
    • Jun 25, 2008
    • Blog

    Six months ago, during the negotiations between Indy Car and Champ Car to merge the two series, many were saying “don’t get your hopes up” because unification would not result in some “magic bullet” that would instantly catapult American open-wheel racing back to the prominence of yesteryear. And while that still might be true, two things we now know for sure is unification has already shown significant positive results and the people at the Indy Car Series offices are feeling very good about their prospects for the future.

    Let’s look at a few of the positive trends that are shaping American open wheel racing since “the split” ended:

  • NASCAR Should’ve Parked Kyle Busch
    • Jun 16, 2008
    • Blog

    As much as NASCAR leaves the National Hockey League it its (brake) dust, there is one rulebook item in the land of puck that stock car racing needs to adopt. Hockey, like NASCAR, markets itself on its physical, take-no-prisoners play. It doesn’t want to feminize the sport by not letting the players police themselves. But in hockey there’s a difference between toe-to-toe fisticuffs and something that is considered an “attempt to injure.” The NHL has drawn a clear line between dropping the gloves and parting someone’s molars with a stick. NASCAR has not done nearly as good a job at defining what is aggressive and what is egregious. 

  • Missing Out
    • Jun 10, 2008
    • Blog

    But the biggest reason for Ame­rican indifference (to soccer) comes down to a surprising fact of our modern media-saturated life: that actually, there may not be a limit after all to America’s entertainment attention span. With homegrown sports like baseball and American football taking up so much mental space, football (soccer) seems doomed to a spot somewhere below NASCAR auto racing but above professional bowling.


    Moscow News.

  • It’s not all about you
    • Jun 09, 2008
    • Blog

    I wish I had recorded the moment when my son’s middle-school soccer coach told parents to zip it.
    Don’t coach your child from the sidelines, she said in a preseason meeting. Don’t berate the referees. If you can’t behave, you’ll be asked to leave.

    Sound advice. And not exactly welcome in a room where 60 percent of the parents were statistically likely to be “helicopter parents,” always hovering over their children. Still, it’s a necessary reminder that “it’s not all about you.”
    I would play that recording at next May’s drivers meeting before the Indy 500. No more of the tantrums and petulance we saw this year, as losing drivers berated their crews and other drivers and threatened fisticuffs, as if this were the junior prom, not auto racing. I didn’t pay $90 a ticket to watch frustrated drivers mouth off. I can see that for free during Manhattan rush hour.


    The Indianapolis Star.

  • Prelude Beats Other Sports’ Similar Attempts
    • Jun 06, 2008
    • Blog

    For the record, the Prelude to the Dream isn’t the first time sports figures have been spurred by charity to participate in a whimsical event that brings the athletes back to the roots of their chosen craft. It’s just the only one that has ever been worth a damn.


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