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View From The Couch

How I became a rabid, hard core, NASCAR fanatic.

I have been a sports fan?that means all sports?since I was young. I had a Sports Illustrated subscription when I was in third grade. While I loved and knew about all sports, my main interests ran with the stick and ball sports. Part of this was the lack of TV coverage growing up. I would watch the Indy 500, but didn?t move beyond that for my motorsports fix.

I would watch the occasional race or see highlights on Sportscenter, but I didn?t pursue the sport much beyond that. I do remember watching the Brickyard 400 when Earnhardt Sr won. I also watched the finish and emotional celebration of the 2001 Pepsi 400 when Dale Earnhardt Jr won his first race since the tragic scene at Daytona.

I had nothing against the sport, but admittedly didn?t know a lot about the nuances either. I had a lot of questions that most new fans would have. ?Where?s the skill in flooring it and driving around an oval??
?Aren?t all the cars the same??

Prior to 2004, my NASCAR experience was fragmented. Whether it was catching bits of races, Sportscenter highlights ((Dale Earnhardt wrecking Terry Labonte at Bristol sticks in my mind) or reading articles in Sports Illustrated or ESPN the Magazine, I just had select morsels of knowledge. Ironically, three years earlier I had also produced a motorsports radio show, but had never watched a race. It still provided me with lots of background on the sport and familiarized me with the drivers.

On February 14th, 2004, a Saturday, I proposed to my wife. She said yes, which meant the night was spent making calls to family and friends. She was also leaving for Idaho the next day for a grad school clinical. The combination of fatigue and a wide-open schedule made a lazy afternoon very attractive. With the NFL season over, I decided to check out the Daytona 500.

As I sat down to watch the race I needed a driver to pull for. Based on my scattered knowledge, I formed the following criteria. First, he had to drive a Chevrolet. One thing I knew was the importance of manufacturer loyalty to NASCAR fans. My grandpa and uncle both worked for Chevy, so my favorite drivers would all have to race for the bowtie. Next, he had to be a front runner. In most sports I shy away from backing the obvious choice. But with NASCAR, if I was going to invest, I needed some initial assurance that my driver would be in the middle of the action. This narrowed my choices to Gordon, Johnson, Stewart, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Finally, the factor that put me over the top was a few interactions I had with several people. On more than one occasion I?ve had complete strangers tell me I looked like Dale Earnhardt Jr. So I had to oblige.

Obviously the fact that Junior won the race had an impact on me sticking with the driver, but even without the win, I was quickly hooked on the sport. The biggest reason was the large differences in NASCAR compared to stick and ball sports. Instead of trying to follow 30 teams and hundreds of players, there was one race that captured every star in the sport each week. The normal cliches of sports were mostly missing. Drivers talked about things relating to the race instead of fielding questions about contract holdouts, drug arrests, or domestic disputes (plus a driver has never, to my knowledge held a press conference while doing situps in his driveway).

The speed and intensity of 43 cars running in a vibrant, tight pack was something completely different than the sports I was used to. It was accented with coverage and access not seen in other sports. In-cameras and audio, interviewing drivers during caution flags gave incredible insight into the race. And this is where I also began to see how many variables truly go into driving a stock car race on an oval.

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