The Land of Ozz

I have been a little busy with family and other stuff, but I had to take time to comment on the recent NASCAR penalties.  I like the idea penalizing the crew chiefs for violations on the cars.  I am not a big fan of penalizing the drivers.  I have played the role of race car crew chief a few times in my life.  I can honestly say that I have done things to the car that I did not tell the driver about.  Nothing illegal, but I have adjusted things a little more or less than what was expected from time to time.  There are times when they need to worry about driving and nothing else.  The driver has plenty of distractions with fans, qualifying, practice sessions, etc.  They do not need to know everything and often don’t know everything if a crew chief is doing his job.

That said, here is my suggestion for NASCAR.  Continue to give the fines and suspensions to the crew chiefs who are caught breaking the rules just like you have been doing.  Continue to ban them from the garage areas for the entirety of the suspension.  The only change I recommend is that NASCAR make the suspension an on-track suspension.  I akin this idea to the hockey penalty box.  Don’t bar the crew chiefs from the track all together, rather require them to report to a NASCAR trailer at the track an hour before any official race activity is to begin.  That would include qualifying, practice sessions, and actual races.   Have them check all cell phones, radios, PDA’s and computers at the door.  Station a couple of NASCAR officials in the trailer with them while you force them to watch something like an annoying children’s video repeatedly for the entirety of their NASCAR trailer stay.  Require the crew chief to be in the trailer before their driver is allowed to move the team’s car out of the garage area.

It does not sound like that big of a deal, but NASCAR can prevent the crew chiefs from running their normal job via a cell phone from their couch at home or from the top of a motor home outside of the track.

Eury Jr. apparently parked his motorcoach on a hill inside the race track and communicated with Earnhardt from there. Earnhardt reportedly spotted his crew chief during a caution period, first yelling “Hey Man!” on his radio and then explaining “I just saw a friend out there.” Source: Yahoo! Sports

This little twist will require the team owners to cart the suspended crew chiefs to the track and ensure that they are in the presence of NASCAR officials before the team car is allowed turn a wheel on the racetrack.  This will add an additional level of pain to the teams and cost NASCAR next to nothing to enforce.  I call it the NASCAR Crew Chief Penalty Box.

It appears that Dateline NBC is about to stage some kind of sting on NASCAR fans. Dateline is said to be “Looking for Muslim Males to participate in NBC Dateline Segment” to draw “discriminatory comments or actions while being filmed.” There are copies of a couple of emails that are said to be moving between Dateline producers and possible actors for the sting. The content contains a couple of hilarious comments. One says the “Nascar event (and other smaller events) in Virginia” are possible targets. LOL!!! These folks obviously have never been to a NASCAR race. The head count at a NASCAR race can reach far into the six figure range. The other funny item in these emails is the following statement:

“I have been talking with a producer of the NBC Dateline show and he is in the process of filming a piece on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination in the USA.”

I am no English major, but “anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination” implies that they looking to build a story on people who take action (discriminate) against bigots (those who are anti-Muslim). LOL!!! They are having a hard enough time writing an email. Their sentence is a double negative. I believe they meant to say they want to do a piece on people who are anti-Muslim. They could have said they are filming a piece on discrimination against Muslims and Arabs. Oh yeah there’s one more. NASCAR is an acronym, not a proper noun. I know, I am not one who should be correcting anyone else’s English. I just couldn’t resist.

I got wind of this from Michelle Malkin’s blog here and here.

I have an idea as to what NBC might be up to. It is no secret that many long time NASCAR fans grew very unhappy with Sunday afternoon race coverage when NBC took over coverage of half the season in 2001. Here’s a little poll that I found of 439 people responding to how displeased they were with the NBC coverage of one particular race in 2003. You can do a Google search on “NBC NASCAR coverage ____” and fill in the blank with your own slang verb. It would be hard for NBC to admit that they just couldn’t cover NASCAR the way the other networks did it for years. Maybe NBC is trying to gather some dirt to use to justify distancing themselves from the NASCAR scene at the end of the 2006 season.

A December story said, “NBC has withdrawn from negotiations to continue as a NASCAR television partner beyond the 2006 season, opening a door through which ABC/ESPN may walk to return to the sport, The Charlotte Observer has learned.” (Source)

I found an interesting article on Tony Stewart. I am a big fan of Stewart and have been for a while. His handling of the media today gives me even more reason to like him. Thanks to Jerry Bonkowski for a great article on Stewart.

Who actually won the Superbowl? Do you want to guess how I voted? Stay tuned for racing.

Update: It looks like Michele Malkin was in the same boat as me when it came to the Superbowl viewing, but she points out to us some folks that did watch and noticed the military being MIA during the big game. I’ll bet you see a military presence at the Daytona 500 on 2/19.

Linked to: Don Surber and Conservative Cat

With these two big sporting events coming up in the next few weeks I thought it might be good to put them up against each other in an OzzPoll. This poll is publicy availible on dPolls.com as well.

I am trying things a little diferent this week. I am using dPolls.com for the first time. I am not posting the poll itself in the sidebar primarily because it doesn’t fit. I have requested the ability to modify the size fo the image from dPolls.com. We will see what happens. The last option was added for Mark over at the Imagine Kitty.

This is my OTA open post for Monday January 30, 2006.

Post links to:
http://www.hoei.com/blog/archive/2006/01/30/197/

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Links to:
Linkfest Haven, Freedom Folks, Is It Just Me?, Don Surber, Conservative Cat, The Florida Masochist, Imagine Kitty

The title is correcet. I am going to out myself as a pretty serious Tony Stewart fan in this post. This is not because he is the reigning champion in the Nextel Cup Series, but because he is a real good driver. I try to follow NASCAR news in the off season to see how things are shaping up for the next season. Well, ONE of my favorite drivers, Tony was taken to the hospital after a crash at the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals. That’s right, Chili Bowl. For those hard core Southern STOCK Cars fans, this is a form of racing that for some reason has never caught on in the South. I like Tony Stewart a lot an I think he is one of the best drivers to ever race in Nextel Cup Series, formally know as the Winston Cup Series. It looks like his injuries from the Chili Bowl wreck are minor and should not affect his performance in Daytona in February.

By the way, I started another new category with this post. I started to call it “Sports” but decided that Racing is the only real sport anyway so why bother including anything else.