Given the news, I had to.

Paul Tracy can’t wait to bring his special brand of douchebaggery to the IRL. Watch out Danica, Paul will punch you in the face if you look at him wrong.

Well well well, will you look at this:

Most Champ Car teams were told to quit working on their Panoz chassis Monday and expect delivery of their new cars in a few days. Paul Tracy is coming to Indianapolis later this week for a seat fitting. And one of Champ Car’s co-owners admitted to a fellow owner there would only be one series in 2008.

After 12 years of warring that cost open-wheel racing much of its sponsorship, audience and momentum, common sense has finally prevailed.

SPEEDtv.com has learned that the Indy Racing League and Champ Car have officially, and mercifully, agreed to become one entity. A press conference could come as early as Wednesday if Kevin Kalkhoven is back from England in time.

12 years that have killed open wheel  racing in the United States.  As someone who grew up idolizing drivers like Rick Mears and Bobby Rahal, going to pole day every year with my family and listening to the Indy 500 on the radio the decline of open wheel here has been hard to stomach. It’s to the point that the IRL was really on the verge of losing me to NASCAR, with the move of Sam Hornish Jr. to the ’stock’ cars just about being the final nail in the coffin.

Tony George wishes to inform you that the 12 year split is all part of his grand masterplan.  Next step: A laser death ray on the moon. (picture courtesy espn.com)

We’ll see if this helps open wheel or if it is too late. I’m hoping that the combined series will at least have the effect of more drivers per race driving a little more interest and this being in the news enough to draw some people back to give it a try again. Now to try and market the personalities of the drivers (which is what has sold NASCAR so well).

Open wheel is still the way to go for North American racing fans who like speed. Those boats on wheels in NASCAR (which stopped being ’stock’ YEARS ago) don’t hold a candle to the speed and danger of an Indy Car.

HT to Masson for finding this story.

P.S. Yes, I plan on writing here more again. 

There is only one way I will root for the Patriots. If the entire team and crowd at the stadium re-enacts the “Shipoopi” dance from the Family Guy episode Patriot Games.

Otherwise, I suppose I am forced to root for the Chargers and Marmalard.

In what could possibly be the funniest baseball blog post of all time, Flotsam Media comes up with a statistical formula to measure that most Ecksteinian of descriptions: gritty.

After Tim McCarver’s month-long David Eckstein sploogefest that was October 2006, a serious investigation into ‘grit’ was long overdue. Despite the penchant of sportswriters and broadcasters to throw the term around willy-nilly, I was hard-pressed to locate a firm definition of grit in the baseball sense. Using lots of laptop science stuff, I think I’ve improved the definition, which isn’t really saying much, since there wasn’t one to begin with.

…

RESULTS
Across 13,249 player-seasons, the data appears to have a relatively normal distribution. The data shows a range of about -50 to +50 with one outlier at -90.011 (see below), and a mean and median extremely close to 0. These numbers are promising for the prospects of GRIT as a statistic, as they suggest that the average player is neither extremely gritty, nor extremely talented.

Check the link for actual GRIT statistics. I believe this is a nerdy mcnerderson statistic that people like Joe Morgan could get behind. via Fire Joe Morgan.

Charlie Weis Ate My Baby presents to you definitive proof that there is no God:

Bob Kravitz is getting his own drive time sports talk radio show.

What did Indianapolis sports fans do to deserve this? Wasn’t The Brawl enough?

In tribute to Bob Kravitz I am writing this entire post with simplistic, one sentence paragraphs, just like Deadspin noted two years ago.

Derek Anderson celebrates after he successfully makes a batch of his Derek’s World Famous Cleveland Brownies.

Add your own captions below.

Random wikipedia browsing is a fun little hobby, and sometimes leads you to some pretty interesting revealations. This little stream of wikipedia consciousness led me to the Indianapolis Colts NFL Draft 1st Round Picks (aka Bill Polian Is A Savior Sent From Above) and eventually to the Indianapolis Racers, our city’s member of the World Hockey Assiciation in the late 70’s.

The WHA existed from 1972 - 1979 as a competitor to the NHL. In 1979 they folded their top four teams out of the surviving six into the NHL: Edmonton, Quebec (now Colorado), Winnepeg (now Phoenix) and The Whale (New England, now Carolina).

Okay, so no surprise that Indianapolis wasn’t one of the four. They had folded a mere 25 games into that final season. But what if?

Two players on that 1978-79 roster for short stints?

Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier.

Gretzky was sold to the Edmonton Oilers after only 8 games and Messier played “five games and failing to register a point before being released. He was picked up by the [Cincinnati] Stingers for the remainder of the season, before being selected by the Oilers in the 1979 NHL Entry Draft.”

To me, having BOTH Gretzky and Messier on your team and failing to hold onto them for more than 8 games, has to rank as one of the greatest sports management mistakes in history. Remember, Gretzky and Messier went on to form the backbone of the great Edmonton teams of the 80’s that 5 of 7 Stanley Cups (Gretzky only around for four of those). Not saying a Racers NHL franchise would have repeated that success, especially without goalie Grant Fuhr, but with two of the greatest players to ever lace up it’s hard to say there wouldn’t be at least one Cup in Indy.

And what about further fallout for Indy sports? If the Racers had joined the NHL and shown some success, creating a and sustaining a hockey fanbase, would we even have the Indianapolis Colts? Would the Dome have been built?

Who knows, but it’s fun to think about. Unless you are a hockey fan in Indianapolis. Then it just hurts.

(I’m hoping to find a copy of Red, White & Blues: A Personal History of Indianapolis Racers Hockey 1974-1979. )

Note: This was originally posted as a diary at Stampede Blue that got front-paged, so I figured I’d crosspost it here as well

To quote one of my favorite SNL skits, “who are the ad wizards that came up with this one?”

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071024/SPORTS03/7 10240466/1100

The week becomes even more truncated when a Monday night road game is followed by a road game the next Sunday. Over the past decade, the NFL schedule makers have set up that scenario — away Monday, away Sunday — 24 times. Draw your own conclusion as to the impact: Road teams are 12-12 in their ensuing Sunday games, and have lost seven of the past 10.

But the odds are further stacked against the Colts. The Panthers were off last weekend. Carolina last played, and won, Oct. 14 at Arizona. Sunday marks only the third time since 1997, and the first since 2004, that a team has played away from home on Monday and again the next Sunday against a team coming out of its bye.

(Emphasis added)

This is a dangerous game, IMO. A very rare away-monday night/away next Sunday vs. team off Bye combined with the potential to look ahead at the Patriots. Really, what the hell were the schedule makers thinking when they drew this up?

Greg Aiello, the NFL’s vice president of public relations, said the league is sensitive to every team’s scheduling concerns and attempts to minimize what might be considered inequities.

“But sometimes it is unavoidable when you are constructing a 256-game schedule,” Aiello wrote in an e-mail. “It’s just the way it worked out this year.”

So he’s saying that this schedule quirk was just plain unavoidable?  I’m not saying they did it on purpose, but to have it turn out this way - did they even try to fix it to make it a bit more fair?

Ahhh the internet. Found the video of said SNL skit.

At least this fan was able to keep himself entertained during while the Colts blew out the home team Jaguars…

I’m also working on a project for the week leading up to the Colts/Patriots game inspired by this Oliver Willis post. Going to do a series of propaganda posters inspired by actual WWII propaganda posters. But when I came across this one I just had to make one for the JAX fans.

It really seems like Dallas Clark is trying to make parody a reality.

In Search Of Dallas

Depending upon the game situation and the players available to offensive coordinator Tom Moore, Clark can be found at any one of seven spots on the field — split out wide left or right; in either slot, where he seems to excel; at either end of the offensive line like a traditional tight end; or in a split backfield, playing the H-back position alongside a tailback.
…
Defenses first must locate Clark, then determine who should chase him. A third cornerback? A linebacker? A safety?

Consider how he was used during a 13-play sequence in the first half against Denver this season: wide right, wide left, wide right, wide left, slot right, slot right, slot left, wide right, slot left, slot right, tight left, slot left, tight right. On the 13th play, he slipped a block, ran down the seam, then cut to the right corner of the end zone, where he made a sliding catch for a 9-yard touchdown.

Moving around in the formation, Clark said, “is a lot of fun to see how a defense adjusts. Like when I was playing for Marv (wide receiver Marvin Harrison, who was injured against the Broncos), seeing if they bring a linebacker out there or a safety, or (cornerback) Champ Bailey.

I’m still waiting on a Dallas Clark clone to play linebacker though. Because Dallas Clark owns.