NASCAR

Michigan Lands $5 Million Dollar Michigan Man

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The figures are in and Michigan Man, Jim Harbaugh, has signed a seven-year, $35 million dollar contract with a $2 million dollar signing bonus. The deal also includes a provision where Harbaugh will be eligible for a 10 percent raise after the third and fifth year of his contract.

Harbaugh will not be the highest paid coach in college football, and that is better optically for the university and its coach, but Harbaugh won’t be shopping the clearance rack at Walmart for his khakis.

Watching the press conference today, there was a rising tide of good feeling and bonhomie associated with the selection of Harbaugh, but the cold, hard reality of Michigan football will eventually rear its ugly head.

This is not a school that hired Jim Harbaugh to win the Big Ten’s East Division, but a big time football program desperately in need of validation through a Big Ten championship and a national title. (This isn’t We Are Marshall.) Somehow, I don’t get the feeling the folks in the SEC are too worried about the resurrection of Michigan when Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide reloads year after year.

With Harbaugh at the helm, Michigan’s alums and fans expect to win a national championship, but are these people in touch with reality and the present landscape of college football? Harbaugh will need to challenge the power of the SEC, compete for elite recruits and make Michigan a destination for future pros. What high school quarterback, with NFL aspirations, wouldn’t want to be mentored by Harbaugh? Will that be enough for Harbaugh’s program to beat the SEC and Ohio St. for recruits that can make Michigan a perennial powerhouse? Michigan football is an unwieldy beast that has a voracious appetite for success, and this beast will not hesitate to devour a struggling Michigan man.

Want To Be an NFL Owner?

At the New York Jets press conference announcing the firings of General Manager John Idzik and Head Coach Rex Ryan, owner Woody Johnson started speaking extemporaneously about former Jet, current Patriot, and All World cornerback, Darelle Revis, who will be a free agent.

Johnson committed a blatant act of tampering, but what surprises me is the sheer stupidity of most NFL owners. Woody Johnson  has proven to be at the top of that class. Purchasing the Jets for $635 million in January of 2000, Woody Johnson has proven himself to be a poor communicator and an inept manager of a professional sports franchise, but his net worth makes him a Teflon Don that has a boot on the neck of Jets fans for years to come.

A person who lacks charisma and leadership skills will be tasked with hiring the next coach of the New York Jets. Johnson has hired Charlie Casserly and Ron Wolf as old school NFL consiglieres to assist him, but Woody Johnson will have the ultimate say as to whom replaces Rex Ryan.

If Woody Johnson wasn’t an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, would he ever amass wealth in today’s world?

In the United States, there are perhaps a few hundred people who can purchase an NFL team. I am not one of those people, but I am supremely confident that I could run the New York Jets more efficiently than Woody Johnson and the Atlanta Falcons better than Arthur T. Blank. After dismissing Mike Smith as head coach, the Falcons have decided to go in a different direction and bring in edgier players. How soon we forget Mike Vick’s dogfighting scandal, Bobby Petrino walking out on the team, and the culture of chronic dysfunction that plagued Arthur T. Blank’s Dirty Birds before Mike Smith took over the sideline.

The most successful NFL franchises are owned by men who can identify the right front office talent, hold employees accountable, and get the fuck out of the way when they have no fucking clue what they are doing.

The Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and the Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam are perfect examples of egocentric jag-offs who refuse to get the hell out of the way.

With his ubiquitous Jets hat, Woody Johnson has the air of a prep school dilettante who has found a club sport to occupy his time. The Jets give Woody street cred at the country club, but he lacks the ability to make difficult decisions. Woody rakes in the bucks for the RNC, but the Jets chose to stay under the salary cap for the 2014 season.

Rex Ryan should have been fired when John Idzik was named general manager two years ago. Idzik did not want Rexy as his coach, Rexy did not want Geno Smith as his quarterback, and Woody didn’t know what the hell he was doing. The Jets have a weak owner, and weak owners are routinely punished in the NFL, which should be in line with Woody’s political views.

Mike Grimm

Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm (R) is looking for a job, and he’d bring some Staten Island win or I’ll toss you off the third deck leadership to Met Life Stadium.

Rex

I would hire Rex Ryan to lead my team when he learns clock management, his sideline doesn’t constantly appear like a NASCAR pit crew on Adderall, and he takes an interest in grooming a quarterback.

I would hire Rex to make a socially acceptable sex tape, but he might refrain from making a sexually explicit fetish video as it could be potentially career damaging.

NFL Blues

The NFL bores me. The NFL is a chameleon that will alter its product for the greatest Return On Investment. Fantasy leagues explode and the NFL quickly shifts to a league that loves the pass and hates the run. Tackling is treated as a necessary evil, but we sure don’t want to alienate our viewers with images of players leaving the field unable to remember their own names, the name of their wife sitting in the Family Section, or the name of their girlfriend in Section 202.

Prep Schools

Woody Johnson gives prep schools a bad name.

Making A Left in Massachusetts

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Allstate Corp. (ALL) came out with its annual ranking of automobile accident prone cities, and drivers in Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts, topped the list. Living in Massachusetts, there is no denying that the drivers of Eastern and Central Massachusetts are complete morons. Each day there is something new and aberrant on the road that your driver’s ed teacher never instructed you to do.

Worcester topped the list. In the Woo, on average, a driver can expect a collision every 4.3 years. In Boston, safer and saner heads prevail and motorists can expect a collision every 4.4 years. Worcester and Boston usurped perennial front-runner, Washington, D.C., which had garnered the treasured top spot for six straight years.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a place that NASCAR driver Tony Stewart could call home. This is the land where the evolutionary concept of nature versus nurture has to be examined. Is the root cause of this regional malady a lack of sufficient and competent driver’s education instructors or is there a recalcitrance to Massachusetts drivers that is beyond the realm of reason?

This is a part of the country where Masshole is invoked proudly. Where else do drivers routinely make left turns cutting off oncoming traffic and then give a pandering hand wave to the car that could have t-boned it? Only in Masshole Nation does this happen.

To provide an example, when a Masshole is pulling out of Dunkin’s after receiving an adipose injection of Coolatta or Iced Coffee, our Bay State motorist will plant her car in the lane of oncoming traffic to make a left.That’s right, the proper way to make a left turn out of a parking lot is to block traffic from the nearest lane and then force your way into the other lane. This is standard practice and nothing that is deemed weird or abnormal. The pandering hand wave is usually performed by a woman – who does not care – that she stopped the forward progress of five cars to make a left.

Want to take a left at a red light? If you’re the first car in line, gun your engine because you are expected to beat the car facing you and looking to go straight. Did your driver’s ed teacher instruct you to yield?  Fuck that bullshit. No Masshole worth his Dunk’s keychain is going to abide by that nonsense. Get a slow start off the line and expect a fusillade of car horns rebuking your familiarity with the rules of the road.

Making that lane change – only pussies signal.

The speed limit reads 65 mph. Either rev it up to 75 mph or get off the road.

Respect the bike lane. What is this China?

Purchasing car insurance in Massachusetts can be an expensive proposition, but living in Worcester is sublime. Only a true Masshole can appreciate the bleak, bone-chilling landscape offered by a winter in Worcester. As long as there is a reliable supply of booze, winter in Worcester is a manageable affair.

Winter will test a soul in Worcester or Boston. And maybe that is the underlying reason for the insanity of Massachusetts drivers; they would rather die in a car wreck than go through another soul-crushing winter.

Blame Tony Stewart (I Don’t Know)

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When I woke up this morning, I had no intention of writing a piece about auto racing and there’s a huge part of me that clearly sees the hypocrisy of even attempting such an exercise. 

I don’t like auto racing. I don’t know crap about open wheel racing, restrictor plate racing or Grand Prix events. I won’t watch NASCAR, Indy, Nationwide or Formula One. For a person who does not discriminate in my love of sports, I would rather watch a marathon of Lifetime Television, about emotionally-troubled bulimic women, than watch ten minutes of auto racing. 

But I find the personalities that make up auto racing completely engrossing. NASCAR is populated with a slew of drivers, crew chiefs and owners who are a rich source material for magazine articles, documentaries and reality television. What I find fascinating about auto racing is the characters that will abandon all thoughts of personal safety, for an adrenalizing rollercoaster ride, and the spoils that come with victory. The lucrative sponsorship deals, the interviews on ESPN, and the deluge of young and attractive women looking to spend an evening with the latest young gun on the track. 

Tony Stewart, 43, is the racer in the black hat. He is an intimidator. That has been the narrative, and that will not change after the events of Saturday night. 

Tony Stewart’s sprint car drove into fellow racer, Kevin Ward, Jr. Ward was 20. He was young, inexperienced and a competitor. Stewart wrecked Ward’s sprint car at a race in Canandaigua (NY) Motorsports Park. Visibly incensed, Ward climbed out of his car and then made his way down through race traffic to challenge Stewart’s oncoming car. In the dark of an upstate New York night, Ward’s life was ended by Stewart’s sprint car traveling approximately 35 mph on a dirt track.

Game over. There is no replay review needed. Can’t call a time out or ask for a do-over. Kevin Ward, Jr.’s life is snuffed out in the blink of an eye. 

Blame Tony Stewart. I don’t know.  

Blame Kevin Ward, Jr. I don’t know. Youth can make us lose sight of what is safe and prudent. The kid was competing, and there was no way he was going to let Mr. NASCAR drill him into a wall and not let Mr. NASCAR hear about it. The kid showed some balls and a lot of fight. As a society, we laud those traits in our sons and daughters, but was this simply the act of reckless youth immune to the inherent dangers that surrounded him on a dark, dirt track?

There are no simple answers. Auto racing is a dangerous game practiced by people with outsized ambitions and an apparent lack of fear. Tony Stewart’s love of racing – at all levels – will come under serious scrutiny. Stewart may decide he has enough of competing in the minors of racing and stay with the big boys of NASCAR. 

Will fans leave Tony Stewart or NASCAR because of Saturday night’s avoidable tragedy? Probably not. Auto racing fans understand that death is part of the gig. When a driver gets strapped in, he or she is quite aware that they are putting their life on the line. Crashes sell. NASCAR knows that. 

I’m more interested in what comes out of this. Will Stewart be vilified and made a pariah? Will the racing community politely refuse to acknowledge the recklessness of Kevin Ward, Jr.’s actions? 

This isn’t a sport for the faint of heart. One lapse of concentration or judgment, and tragedy can’t be so easily averted. Tony Stewart is going to have to wade through a crucible of suffering and introspection that could ruin his life and career; but more importantly, a young man’s life was lost.

Sprint Car Racing