Wow. Has it really been Three Months?

Wow. I really can’t believe it’s been three months since my last post.

One reason it’s been that long is because I’m not sure what to talk about. Sure there are alot of things to talk about. From Politics to Sports to….. The weather.

Buts each topic has the chance to bring up a nasty fight.

Like if I talk about at some point you will have to talk about President Trump. And that will bring problems. If you say something negative about him then his supporters will attack him while getting praise from his detractors while if you say something positive about him you will get attacked by his detractors while getting praise from his supporters.

So much for freedom of speech. You know everyone is so worried about whether our Constitution is being followed and yet when anyone seems to use their First Amendment right to Free Speech, people get yelled at.

Anyway we can talk about sports. Well probably depending on what sport.

Nascar has made quite a few changes starting this season. The changes quite a few things that it might be too much to list right now.

Besides the changes, Nascar got a new title sponsor for the Cup Series. Instead of being all the Nascar Sprint Cup Series, Nascar’s top series is now called Monster Energy Nascar Cup Series.

Thats right the new title sponsor is an Energy Drink.

Well anyway the season hasn’t even started yet, well the points season hasn’t started yet since this past weekend was ‘The Clash’ the renamed Budwiser Shootout which is considered the official start of the Nascar season,  and there has been some controversy.

As I said this past weekend was the ‘The Clash’ Known this season as the Advance Auto Parts Clash. And with that Monster Energy unveiled their Victory Lane people. I’m not sure if you call them models or spokesperson or what.

Anyway Sprint used “Miss Sprint Cup” who wore firesuits with the Sprint logo on it. The Monster Energy woman DO NOT wear fire suits. Instead of a firesuit they wear what some have called revealing clothing. I’ll post a link and you can tell me what you think. Is it appropriate for what has become a family sport over the years or is it inappropriate?

The Monster Energy Girls.

Well that’s it for now. TTFN, That’s all For Now.

 

 

 

Correction to ‘2015 to be Jeff Gordon’s last full season of Nascar Sprint Cup racing’

Alright I normally try not to make mistakes when I write, however sometime I do make a mistake or two. And I ust noticed that I made a mistake. I believe this to be the second mistake I’ve made since I started this blog.

Anyway, in my post about 2015 being Jeff Gordon’s last full season of Nascar Sprint Cup racing i had said that at the time his possible replacement would be 2013 Nascar Xfinity Series champion Chase Elliott.

The mistake is that Chase Elliott was in fact the 2014 Xfinity Series Champion (Formerly Nationwide Series) not 2013.  The 2013 Xfinity Series Champion was Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Dillon.

Also since my original post on this matter it has since been announced that Chase Elliott will indeed replace Jeff Gordon in Hendrick Motorsports fourth car. It has also been announced that the car will retain the number 24 instead of being renumbered at the insistance of Jeff Gordon himself.

There was talk that fans were hoping that Hendrick Motorsports would stop using the number 24 and that it would be retired. However the latter seems unlikley since NASCAR owns the numbers and leases them to the team, and NASCAR in the past has said that they will not retire numbers when Hall of Famer Richard Petty tried to self retire his famed number 43 when he finally climbed out of the drivers seat after the 1992 Nascar Sprint Cup (Formerly Winston Series) season; and when fans had wanted the number 3 retired after the death of legend and Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Sr was killed during the 2001 Daytona 500.

2015 to be Jeff Gordon’s last full season of Nascar Sprint Cup racing

Since he won’t use the r-word (Retire) then I won’t either. I mean it’s only right.

Well I’m surprised but at the same time I’m not surprised. I mean I knew this day would one day come, though I didn’t expect it to come this season. That’s probably the problem when someone has a lifetime contract, people just assume that the person will be around for many more years.

Now I’m not really a Jeff Gordon fan, though that doesn’t mean I didn’t have respect for him. I mean it is hard to not have respect for a guy who is a four-time champion, although he hasn’t won under the current title sponsor. As Gordon’s fellow driver Kenny Wallace said on twitter earlier this month, it’s still the Cup series no matter who the title sponsor is Gordon is still a Nascar Sprint Cup Champion. Which of course I agree with.

Gordon, like most Athletes who decide to leave their sport, wants to go out while they are still competitive. Which is very understandable. Had he not have said how he had decided and told his team owner Rick Hendrick that he planed on this season being his last full season in the middle of the 2014 season, I would have wondered how much the change Nascar made to the Chase for the Sprint Cup had factored into his decision.

Jeff has said though that he isn’t going to be leaving the sport however, which is one reason why he said he won’t use the word retirement. Which is good because Nascar without Jeff Gordon in any capacity just wouldn’t be Nascar. Or at least to me.

So far Jeff Gordon said that he doesn’t have anything set up for racing in any other series, but he said that he hasn’t ruled it out. For now he seems content with probably working behind the scenes at Hendrick Motorsports, where he has an equity stake in his number 24 Chevrolet SS and is listed owner of Jimmie Johnson’s number 48 Lowe’s/Kobalt Tools Chevrolet SS.

But Gordon said he hasn’t ruled out racing in the Nascar Xfinity Series (formerly Nascar Nationwide Series), Nascar Camping World Truck Series, United Sports Car Racing, or any other forum of series.

It will be weird however to watch Gordon competing in one of Nascar’s lower series if and when he chooses to. Of course it will probably be part-time, but it would still be weird.

No word has been said as to who would replace Gordon in Hendrick Motorsports fourth car, but speculation is that it would be Hendrick Development driver and current JR Motorsports driver as well as 2013 Nascar Xfinity Series champion Chase Elliott. Elliott, the son of Nascar Hall of Famer and 1988 Nascar Sprint Cup Champion Bill Elliott, is scheduled to drive in a couple of Nascar Sprint Cup races this season in a fifth R&D car for Hendrick Motorsports, which is why most people think he will replace Gordon next year.

 

Who should the Yankees get?

Now is Major League Baseball’s off-season, a time when teams make trades and sign free agents. It’s a time when fans start wondering what their favorite teams may end up doing. My favorite team is the New York Yankees. (Once upon a time it was the Boston Red Sox’s)

I don’t speculate on what a team should do, especially the Yankees since I’m still annoyed that they traded for Alex Rodriguez.

But I do however wonder the question, Who should the Yankees get?

In my honest opinion, I don’t think the Yankees should get anybody; at least nobody other than maybe a new starting pitcher. I only think that since to me the Yankees were alright last season, they were just hurt by the injuries to their starting pitching corp.

Of course with Derek Jeter retiring, there are probably a few people who would be thinking, are you nuts with Jeter gone there is a hold at Shortstop that needs to be filled. My answer to that would be that I have no idea who the Yankees have at shortstop in their minor league system, maybe they have someone in their system that can easily replace Jeter so they wouldn’t have to worry about either trading or sign someone. Or maybe the Yankees can make a deal with Stephen Drew, he’s a shortstop. I mean who knows maybe the Yankees thought of him as a replacement for Jeter when they acquired him from the Red Sox’s last season.

Yes I know that sounds like me speculating on what the Yankees should do this off-season, but that wasn’t my intent.

Anyway all I wonder who should the Yankees get, other then probably a reliable starting pitcher?

A Retraction to my post ‘When did winning become so important….and what makes a Champion?’

As the title states, this is a retraction to my earlier post ‘When did winning become so important….and what makes a Champion?’.

In the post I stated how the Chase for the Sprint Cup was created in part because the 2003 NASCAR Sprint Cup champion had won the championship without winning a race. That turns out to be false. The 2003 NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion, Roush Racing’s Matt Kenseth, had won one race that year.

Apparently, contrary to what I had been lead to believe, there has never been a NASCAR Sprint Cup champion (Either in the Grand National Division Era, Winston Cup Era, or Nextel Cup Era) that has won the championship but never won a race.

When did winning become so important….and what makes a Champion?

I know people like to win, but when did it become so important to people. Like it’s the only thing that a person should do.

When I was younger, I remember being taught that you should go out there and do your best and if you win then you win.

The reason I’m wondering this is because of recent events in Nascar. For those who may not know what Nascar is, it’s basically a sport (though many don’t consider it a sport since the drivers sit in cars) where drivers race a stock version of a regular street car around a racetrack from anywhere from 90 to 200 MPH (Depending on the track)

Really I think my questioning winning being so important started back when Nascar changed their Playoff format (Called Chase For the Sprint Cup) so that basically only a driver who has won a race could compete for the Championship. Since a few drivers won multiple races in the 26 race ‘Regular Season’ a few drivers advanced because of points.

Anyway the new Playoff system has created some controversy lately from fans being unhappy that the champion may be a driver who hasn’t won a race the whole season, or at least until this point (there are two races left) to drivers seeming to be a bit too aggressive going for the race win to advance to the next round. A round equals three races, the winners of the first two races advance to the next round no matter how they finish in the next two races. This upcoming race would be the last race in the last round before they set the final four who will be eligible to compete for the championship in the final race of the season.

Now as I’ve said on Twitter, Nascar isn’t like other sports who base who can compete for their championships on wins because in Racing they get points for every race no matter where they finish whether it be first place of last place. Not to mention in Racing you get points for leading a lap or most laps led and in some series you get points for where you qualified. In Baseball, Football, Basketball, etc; you get credited with a win or a loss depending on who had the higher score. That means that no matter what you in racing there is a chance that your champion may be a driver didn’t win.

It probably has a low probability of happening, I mean in the Nascar Sprint Cup Series I believe it only happened twice and the last time which was in 2003 was one reason they (NASCAR) created the Chase For the Sprint Cup. The other was that a new series title sponsor was coming aboard in The Nextel Corporation and they wanted to have the Nextel era be a bit different from the RJ Reynolds Winston Era.

As I said this whole questioning started three weeks ago but it really had me thinking after an incident between Nascar Sprint Cup Drivers Brad Keselowski and Jeff Gordon last week at Texas Motor Speedway.

Brad who drivers the number 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion for Penske Racing and needed to win to advance in the championship because he’s at the bottom of the the eight who are currently eligible to advance at the end of the round, tried to get through a gap between the leader and the number 24 of Gordon.

Gordon is higher in points then Brad and would have been safe, barring any incident in the next race, to transferring into the final four.

Anyway after a little scuffle between Gordon, Brad, and crew members from both teams after the race had ended, which left Brad a little battered. Brad gave a statement where he said that he was there to win.

There were 42 other drivers, the Sprint Cup field is made up of 43 drivers, there besides him that wanted to win just like he did. but you didn’t see the lowest running car on the lead lap out there forcing their way to the front so he could win.

Now to be far I’m not a big Brad Keselowski fan so if it sounds like I’m a bit too biased against him thats why. Though for the record I’d be saying/thinking the same thing if it had been any other driver out there.

What kind of annoys me to is that Brad is also a former Champion, having won in 2012. It annoys me because even if he’s racing for the win, he’s a former champion and therefore should know when there is an appropriate time to make a move and how to act.

That brings me to another question. What makes a Champion?

Many Nascar fans have been saying recently that the champion needs to be a driver who has won this season, just like the aforementioned sports. A few have even made reference that the champion should be the driver with the most wins.

To me it doesn’t matter how many wins a champion has, I mean both the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals were wild card teams this year (which means they had fewer wins than the Division winners) yet they still got to play in the World Series. To me a Champion is a person who plays their sport well and knows how to act appropriately, and someone who mans up and admits when they did something wrong and understands why someone is mad at them. Those are qualities that Brad hasn’t seemed to show in the last three weeks, he even admitted on television three weeks ago that he didn’t understand why two other drivers (Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth) were mad at him. That’s why I don’t think Brad deserves to have been champion in 2012.

Brad’s attitude towards winning being above everything, makes me fearful that his fans especially the younger ones, will fail to learn the basic fundamentals of good sportsmanship that I and so many others have been taught and play by just because their favorite driver doesn’t follow them.