Monday, Feb. 21, 2005 | 10:42 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
At first, I couldn't figure out why the NHL owners and players wanted to reconvene in a last, last, last ditch effort to resuscitate a hockey season after they already had pulled the plug.
Now I understand. The Daytona 500 was about to come on TV.
If there was any doubt that stock car racing hadn't already blown hockey's doors off to take its place among the "Big Four" of American professional sports, Sunday's Daytona 500 removed it once and for all.
Even if the first 450 miles were about as exciting as watching grass grow in Turn 1.
Man, but those last 50 miles were something special. Four lead changes in the final nine laps. High-tech racing machines ramming into each other like bumper cars at the fair. Two of the sport's icons and its reigning champion, a kid from Las Vegas, battling nose-to-tail, sometimes even door-to-door, in a 185-mph ballet on stock car racing's biggest stage.
So it's safe to say, Gary Bettman, that you've been black-flagged by a bunch of guys from North Carolina who talk funny. And if I were David Stern and Bud Selig, I might have a look in my rearview mirror before they show you the move-over flag, too. (That would be the blue one with the diagonal orange stripe.)
Especially once they take those darned restrictor plates off the cars.
I'm not saying the "Great American Race" was the best thing on TV Sunday, because I didn't watch "Desperate Housewives." But unless all four of them dropped their towels in the last 20 minutes, there's no way they could have matched the last 20 laps at Daytona.
Of course, had the last 20 laps been like the first 180, I might be yearning for hockey. Or at least Teri Hatcher in flame-retardant overalls. But in auto racing and especially in NASCAR, it's all about what happens at the finish. Or at least what happens between the final caution period and the checkered flag.
That sort of makes it like the NBA. Only in the NBA, much to the Clippers' dismay, they don't throw the yellow flag to even things up with three minutes to go.
What also made NASCAR unique -- at least until it sold its television rights to network television -- is that fans at home usually don't have to sit through overwrought pregame shows before the gentlemen and Tony Stewart start their engines.
Hey, Fox, we get the idea that the Daytona 500 is the NASCAR Super Bowl. No need to trot out a bunch of aging, lip-synching musicians to remind us. I mean, Brian Wilson was a musical genius and God love him for still trying, but that rendition of "Good Vibrations" was stiffer than Jeff Gordon's suspension.
It was the start of 4 1/2 hours of motorized ennui, followed by 45 minutes of pulse-pounding drama. It reminded me of "Titanic. " Watching Stewart run circles around the competition was like watching Leonardo DiCaprio put the moves on Kate Winslet before the North Atlantic froze over. Only a lot louder in surround sound.
This is what happens when you start racing in bright sunshine and don't quit until it gets dark with your car fitted with a restrictor plate. A restrictor plate isn't something you'll find in Kirstie Allie's cupboard. It's a device that prevents a racing engine from making horsepower and makes passing difficult. Without a drafting partner or the stars being aligned with Mars, you'd have trouble passing a Pinto at Daytona.
Restrictor-plate racing is like one of those cycling events in the Olympics, when everybody cruises around the track lap after lap, then pedals like Dorothy with the Wicked Witch of the East on her tail during the last one. It's like a date with Anna Nicole Smith. Stay out of trouble for three hours, then brace up for the ride home.
There was a time when 500-mile races were intended to be the ultimate test of man and machine. That was what they used to call the Indy 500. And maybe it was back in 1911, when they ran the first one. You know, back when the Pep Boys were shoeing horses for a living.
Are there subtleties about these all-day speedfests that are underappreciated? Sure, if you spent your childhood overhauling transmissions. Perhaps there's a reason Formula One races last only two hours. That's plenty of time to sniff exhaust fumes. Any longer than that, and you start to sound like Darrell Waltrip. Boogity, boogity, boogity.
Maybe if the races were a little shorter, TV wouldn't have to break for so many commercials to offset the rights fees it paid to broadcast them in the first place. Then maybe we would see the start of the crucial 11-car pileup near the end of the race, instead of watching a guy and his wife wade across a creek for the daily recommended dose of Cialis.
These days, the Daytona 500 is like playing chess, only with a stopwatch instead of a clock. It takes a long time before the end game, when, like Gary Kasparov or Bobby Fischer, you've got to think about a dozen moves ahead. Naturally, some pawns are bound to be sacrificed, or at least punted into the infield grass, where they go flipping end over end.
That just leaves the kings and queens to trade paint at the finish. Or sometimes, even after it.
I'm not entirely sure why Stewart and Jimmie Johnson tried to turn each other into scrap metal after the checkered flag fell Sunday. It had to be one of them racin' deals, because I'm absolutely certain it had nothing to do with the hockey lockout.
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