A Modest Proposal -- Let's go racing, boys!

Being typed as the Daytona 500 preshow runs in the background.

This preshow is only a little bit shorter than the Academy Awards, it's after 3 in the freaking afternoon and the race has not started yet.

The Race Has Not Started Yet.

That is criminal.

When did this become Super Bowl Sunday?  Again?

Now I got to tell you, I LOVE racing.  I grew up with sports cars and have never really left the sport.  And I can handle the occasional NASCAR excursion, though I do miss the right-hand turns.

I just want 'em to line up the cars, turn on the cameras, and run the sonofabitch.  Is that asking too much?

I don't want a rock concert; if I wanted to watch one I'd tune to Austin City Limits.

I don't want to meet the guy who painted Dale's car.

I don't care to see pictures from Jeff Gordon's daughter's playdates.

I want to see some racing.  Period.

I especially don't want to hear some country-western American Idol wannabee massacre the National Anthem.  Give it more respect than that. Sing it straight up or not at all.

Who cares who's in the pace car?  I want them driving slightly ahead of the 43 other guys on the track just for a little while.

I want all those machine heads in the suits to shut the fuck up.   Most of all YOU, DW.  If you're not driving I don't care what you think.

Stop calling the drivers on the radio on the pace lap -- they're busy, goddammit.  Let the man do his job.

It's not Saturday morning so let's not have any cutesypoo animation.  I especially don't want anything that even looks like "Speed Racer."

Leave the bizarre camera angles to MTV and show us who is ahead of everybody else.

I don't give a shit how it sounds, I know what a racing engine sounds like when it's good and I know how it sounds when it's dying and I'm not impressed either way. In fact there is nothing as sickening as an engine that is giving way and I don't have to hear it over and over again.

I don't have to see crashes from every angle including underground. It happens. Clean it up and let's go.

Am I asking too much?

Drop the bullshit.  Run the race.

I bet ratings would go up.

PS Called for rain short of the total distance, a guy who had just taken the lead before it started to rain and led for one lap "won" the race. If they had started the thing at a decent hour -- like, say, 12:30 -- they would have gotten the race in before it rained. See, even God agrees with me.