ESPN
Radio
I have to take a moment to gloat about this. Usually when I mention something that pissed
me off on sports radio, it involves these two a-holes on in the morning on ESPN Radio. Even with a guest host in for one of them, it
was just as bad. The regular and the
guest explained how ESPN’s audience had dropped during their wokness a couple
of years ago (the Colin Kaepernick incident)
and the current nonsense (all driven by presidential politics). People just didn’t want social lecturing with
their sports. Well, they explained,
you’re GD going to get it anyway! You’re
all a bunch of racists for not watching and listening to this. What’s wrong with you people in the audience!
I could barely believe what I was hearing. Apparently, neither could management. A few weeks later, these guys were finally
taken off the air. They gave them a
final show which was unsurprisingly salty and bitter. I can understand. Certainly they thought they were good
soldiers in The Agenda’s war against America.
This was nothing but a betrayal for them. The new replacement show has just focused on
sports as far as I’ve heard.
One down, but there’s still plenty of SWJ sports jerkoffs
out there. One is on Fox Sports Radio, an infiltrator reject
from ESPN Radio. I was disgusted enough
by ESPN once to listen to him. (It’s a
lower power station and hard to listen to.)
He started off by condescendingly explaining to his audience that
they’re all a bunch of racists, NFL
ratings are going to go up this season even with the kneeling, that sports will
now be all social justice, that Trump was going to lose, and that you’ve all
lost and you’re going to have to get over it and embrace everything. I’m kind of hoping a BLM mob breaks into his
studio someday and kills him on the air because he’s white and rich.
Local sports talk isn’t much better. Steve
Kaplowitz had on his baseball expert Jay
Jaffe last week on KROD’s Sportstalk. Jaffe was thrilled about Fernando Tatis Jr. doing so well, because baseball was “too white”
to be popular. I’ve had a theory that
soccer won’t be really popular in this country until the sport is dominated by
large black men. This Jaffe guy
more-or-less sideways agrees with me apparently. Liberal thinking is that all athletic
scholarships and all high-paying sports jobs should go to black men.
In a similar but less racist fashion on an ESPN baseball broadcast, one of their
experts commented that Mike Trout
had had a bad game that night. This was why
baseball wasn’t popular: their star players don’t always perform well every
night. It’s like he’d never seen a ball
game before. So much for professional sports
commentary.
Monster
Truck Jam
Here, we’ll get into motorsports. NBC broadcast
a Monster Truck Jam this
Saturday. I tuned in out of curiosity, but
ended up enjoying it. It’s quite the
spectacle. The gigantic trucks do big
jumps, balance on this front wheels, balance on two side wheels, roll over, and
bleach smoke and fire. It’s a real
crowd-pleaser. There’s a natural toy
tie-in for the kids. In person, it must
be awe inspiring.
NHRA
Here’s another event that probably works a lot better in
person. At least you’re saving your
hearing by watching at home. There were
still a restricted number of fans allowed at the Indianapolis event and FOX Sports continually emphasized masks,
social distancing, and cleaning hands as they ruthlessly promoted the Cold
Agenda. If you’re broadcasting sports
you’re either pushing the Cold or BLM.
FOX at least stuck with the whole event this time, though
it ran over three and a half hours. My
favorite, Leah Pruett, did a bit
better at the event than previous ones I’d watched. The big showdown turned out to be the Pro Stock Motorcycles between a first
time finalist and Angelle Sampey,
who hadn’t won in a couple of years.
Angelle took it even after an impromptu repair at the start line before
the race.
NASCAR
NBC finally broadcast a race last week, as opposed to
dumping it off on NBCSN. It was the first time with the road course at
Daytona for the NASCARs. Except for a couple of drivers who had run
the 24-hour sportscar race, none of the rest of the field had ever driven
it. There wasn’t even any qualifying or
practice.
The race turned out to be pretty clean and
entertaining. My judgment might be a bit
biased since Chase Elliot won. Even better, there was little in the way of social
justice, Bubba, nooses, or even cold coverage during the race. There were fans in attendance, I think. The stands are so cavernous, a small number
of fans can get lost in the picture.
Camera shots panning by occasionally showed a crowd in a section, but
then didn’t on the next pass by.
Indy
500
It was a couple of months late, but here was my favorite
race of the year, Indy. Inexplicably,
there were no fans present for the race.
NHRA has been racing in Indianapolis the last two months and had fans
there. NASCAR has been allowing fans at
their races for an even longer period of time. IMS is so huge, you could
put thousands of people there and not have any of them within shouting distance
of each other. I have heard no
explanation for this decision.
Ask Roger Penske. He bought the place from Tony George and the Hulman
family earlier this year. He might
have reconsidered if he could have seen the future. Penske had made a bunch of fan-centered
renovations to IMS after the purchase.
According to a newspaper article I read this morning, so much of most
teams’ sponsorships were tied to this race, they had to run it at some point no
matter what.
I was watching the race with dad. We missed most of the pre-race to go out and
get a pizza. (Certainly, I’ll make that
trade.) We were also watching the race
on dad’s new 40” TV. Actually, last
week’s Daytona race was the first sport we’d watched on it, but I think this
race was more impressively displayed on the bigger screen.
The first thing we saw was Ryan Hunter-Reay making a speech before the driver introductions. He said how much they missed the fans and
couldn’t wait to have them back next year.
This would be a continuing theme for the afternoon. Danica
Patrick was admittedly looking good in the pre-race as a commentator. I’m not sure what’s currently going on in her
love life, which is what most of her fans are interested in.
A probably local doctor sang the Anthem with another
doctor accompanying him on piano. It was
very well done. The Air Force Thunderbirds made two flyovers, one during the Anthem and
another with an air show starburst after Back
Home in Indiana. (The Air Force and
the Space Force, both sponsored cars
today.) Up on the victory podium, Penske
again officially said how much they wished the fans were there and gave the
command to start engines. Is it just me,
or did the Corvette Stingray pace
car look a whole lot like a Ferrari? Heresy!
There were actually some enterprising fans at the
track. There was a large tailgate going
in the parking lot. One fan had rented a
tree for $400 at a house that had a clear view of a corner. Yes, he even put up a treehouse to sit
in. The track director had made an
unprecedented proclamation that any fan who had a consecutive race attendance
streak going could still count this race as long as they watched it somewhere.
You can maybe tell that I was taking notes for this
event. However, I’m going to condense
what I wrote. (I can’t believe I’ve
already written this much.) Marco Andretti won the pole, but Scott Dixon quickly passed him to take
the lead. He would dominate much of the
first half of the race. The first wreck
happened on Lap 6 with a right front brake explosion, which caused the tire to
catch on fire. The next accident
happened on Lap 25 with a car slapping the wall and catching on fire.
The current Indycar design features an enclosing
windshield. When I first saw it, I’d
worried a bit about how easily drivers would be able to get out quickly in the
event of a fire, and right off the bat, here were two fires. The answer was unfortunately, not
easily. Track safety officials are going
to need to be real quick getting to damaged cars.
Teams were testing out various strategies after the wrecks,
but there are no winning strategies this early in the race, only losing
ones. Around Lap 90, there was a spin on
a restart at the front of pit lane.
Another driver lost control trying to avoid the spin and slammed very hard
into the pit wall. Amazingly, he was
okay.
By Lap 103, Dixon and Alexander
Rossi were swapping the lead. They
were taking turns breaking the air to increase their gas mileage. Unfortunately on pit road, Rossi collided
with Takuma Sato and was assessed a
penalty that sent him to the back of the field.
Rossi made some impressive moves, but ended up being the next wreck on
Lap 144. Now legitimate fuel mileage
strategies would come into play.
The winning move of the race happened during side-by-side
coverage during a commercial break. It
seemed fairly innocent. Taku made a
nearly uncontested pass of Dixon on the front stretch with 26 laps to go. Neither were leading at the time, but the two
cars that were, were going to have to pit.
Dixon’s team was convinced Sato was going to be too tight on fuel to
keep up a fast pace up front. He’d have
to slow down to finish the race.
Before 10 laps to go, Dixon made move to retake the lead
on the front stretch. Sato held a line
that kept him from easily doing it. This
may have been a feint to get Sato to either block and be penalized or to get
him to use up more fuel. Lapped traffic
then came into play. Sato had to slow
down, which may have helped his mileage.
Dixon, though, was not catching up.
With five laps to go, Indy had its final twist. The worst crash of the day saw a car plowing
into the tire barrier at the end of the pit lane wall. A live camera shot actually caught the end of
the wreck. The driver was sent to the
hospital, but he did pull himself out of the car and step away, before promptly
sitting down on the track. The hero of
this race was undoubtedly chassis manufacturer Dallara and track safety improvements.
Takuma Sato won the race under caution. Indycar does not have a Green/White/Checker
Overtime rule and there were too few laps left to red flag the race and restart
it. Moreover, the tire barrier would
probably need a lengthy repair. This was
Taku’s second Indy win. Over in Japan,
the people there would be waking to the news of his victory. The new Victory Lane elevator was used for
its first Indy 500 winner. At the top, a
heavily bearded David Letterman gave
Taku a big hug and blessed him for giving him another victory as a team
owner.
It was another great race.
The unnecessary lack of fans only spoiled the ambiance, not the drama. Takuma and the other drivers deserved a round
of live applause. Honestly, I’m not sure
when I’m going to be writing again. I
was mostly just venting for these two posts.
That’s not really worth my time to write about. We’ll see what happens next. Hopefully, current events don’t step in to
ruin any more of this year’s sports.
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