Columnist Ron Kantowski: New speedways yield boring NASCAR races

Tuesday, May 2, 2000 | 10:22 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

Gentleman, start your e-mails. And start rattling off your angry faxes.

NASCAR Winston Cup racing is getting boring.

Four inhabitants of the Sun newsroom were on hand for Sunday's NAPA Auto Parts 500 at California Speedway in Fontana, Calif. Only two were working. But all four said it lacked excitement.

Regardless of how many different race winners there have been in how many different races this season (10 for 10, if you are scoring -- er, keeping lap charts -- at home), there have been few spine-tingling races this season. A couple of tight finishes, maybe. But nothing to sustain your interest for 500 miles or three-plus hours.

The races at most tracks have become so tedious, you're better off mowing your grass (or watching it grow), then tuning in RPM2Night on The Deuce for Rece Davis' recap. Like Kenny Mayne before him, Davis' humorous delivery of the highlights is often better than the event itself.

Especially these days.

But NASCAR really is not the culprit. Its cars are best suited for sloping bullrings such as Bristol and high-banked superspeedways such as Talladega or Daytona. The quality of racing at those places is usually fantastic.

The problem is that those style tracks are becoming the exception rather than the rule. Virtually all of the new cookie-cutter speedways (such as the one here) are only moderately banked, which makes them suitable (read: safer) for the much faster Indy-style cars and other forms of motor sport.

You can't really fault the track owners for designing them that way. It's hard to justify building a $200 million facility that gets used only one weekend per year.

So brace up for some more follow-the-leader racing. Stock up on No-Doz. Or wait for Aug. 26. That's when the Winston Cup guys will return to Bristol.

* STERN WORDS: As I told a colleague Monday, I find alpine skiing more interesting than the NBA now that Clifford Ray has retired, but at least David Stern is a straight shooter.

When questioned about the drawn-out league playoffs that are threatening to dislodge "North and South" as the longest running TV mini-series for the marginally interested, the NBA commissioner didn't try to spin or sugarcoat it.

"It's done to get more games on NBC," Stern told the Milwaukee Journal, apparently without blushing. "It's also done so we can earn more money, in case there were any doubt about that."

It was always called "blocking" when Michael Jordan drove to the hoop and created contact. But sometimes, honesty is still the best policy in dealing with a skeptical press.

* XFL DANCE PARTY: I wasn't sure how much attention the Sun sports department was going to devote to the new World Wrestling Federation-backed XFL football league until that matter was resolved over the weekend. According to the Boston Globe, the XFL will hire dance coaches for teams and each team will have its own unique dance steps after touchdowns and big plays.

Unless Mike Ditka is hired to coach. Then the league will be shy one dance instructor.

* COURTING BAYNO: Well, I admit I was wrong. If what a source close to UNLV basketball coach Bill Bayno says is true, the University of Houston job was Bayno's if he wanted it after former NBA great Clyde Drexler was let go after two fruitless seasons.

I wrote in this space that Bayno's name is never called whenever Mountain West coaches are mentioned in the context of job openings.

Well, let's amend that to "attractive" job openings.

* AROUND THE HORN: A source close to the Las Vegas Thunder suggested the International Hockey League team could return to the Thomas & Mack Center for the 2001-02 season, as a full-fledged affiliate of the NHL's Vancouver Canucks. ... Orlando Brown, the Cleveland Browns offensive lineman who was struck in the eye by a referee's flag and then retaliated by pushing Jeff Triplette to the ground, has retained Johnny Cochran to fight his on-again, off-again suspension. No word if Kato Kaelin is now bunking with Brown. ... Acapulco cliff divers take note: On hiatus since 1997, "ABC's Wide World of Sports" will return to the airways in 2001. Longtime host Jim McKay will have a weekly cameo role as an essayist. ... New Las Vegas Stars announcer Russ Langer is a solid pro and knowledgeable baseball man who sounds a little like Harry Shearer, the Saturday Night Live alumnus who played bassist Derek Smalls in the "Spinal Tap" mockumentary. Not a bad thing, just an observation.