Apparently Buckwheat is NOT dead.

Wrong. Flat out wrong. Who has more wins than anyone else in the last 7 years? Jimmie Johnson. Top 5's? Jimmie. Top 10's, Best Average Finish, Most Laps Led? JJ. Does he have occasional luck? Yes, but no more than anyone else. You can't get lucky that many times. In fact, Brad K. has had a fantastic 2 years because of lucky breaks. They've gambled more with pit strategies, moving their car up in the field, fuel mileage finishes than any other team, and they've had FAR more breaks than JJ has. Until this past year, JJ has been the absolute unluckiest drivers when it comes to fuel mileage finishes.

As far as the conspiracy theories go for JJ's domination, I can't believe we're still even addressing that. First, JJ's domination has been horrible for the sport. Horrible. Nascar has a finicky, ill-tempered, and often irrational fanbase, and there's no advantage to having a driver like JJ dominate. There's not enough money Hendrick can pay to make it worth it to Nascar. Secondly, if Hendrick truly had France in his back pocket, you can sure as hell bet that Jr. would have more than 2 lousy wins since joining Hendrick.

JJ isn't lucky. He's just one of the top all-time drivers. Ask the announcers and analysts who don't work for Nascar yet call him one of the all-time greats. Ask Hamlin who called him the greatest of all time. Ask his fellow drivers. So is this a case of luck? No. It's more about sour grapes and jealousy.

Most people who make assumptions and make generalized statements such as these about law enforcement are mostly ****.

I remember there being a big push for Grandpa Al to take Leinart in the 2006 draft, but we went with Huff instead. It put us in quite the predicament the following year's draft because we had to decide between 2 sure things...Jamarcus Russell and Calvin Johnson.

Ah...my bad. I did the math too quickly in my head and got it wrong. Of course, one World Series appearance every 51 years changes everything. That's not at all embarrassing.

And unlike the Angels, we like to go the World Series more than once every 60 years.

Yeah....some people are going to complain no matter what, but are you supporting the condition that each team be a conference champion?

Ideally, I'd like to see 8 teams in a playoff as there would be little question that the teams deserving of consideration for the championship would be outside that group. I'd be happy with 4 though.

"To keep the integrity of the regular season and the conference championship games, Kramer said, all of the teams in the playoff should be conference champions."

And that will be the next source of outrage when the first playoffs happen. The best 4 teams, regardless of conference, should be in the playoffs otherwise it's still a sham.

Kenseth's a good driver, but he's not really a spokesman type. I can't even think of a single Kenseth commercial at the moment. When you look at the many sponsors out there in Nascar, Best Buy would be one that's perfect for using a driver personality in their commercials. If I were them, I'd try being at least a part time sponsor with a decent personality.

In related news, Richard Petty has contacted the agents of Nanny McPhee, Mr. Belvedere, and Maria Von Trapp to see if any of them have an interest in becoming Kurt's crew chief. No word yet.

You're right that he probably understands how much harder it is keep sponsors, that people are always watching, etc. The problem is that I really don't think Kurt realizes how bad his actions are.

The reporter should have known better than to interview him at such a bad time, so Kurt (in his head) is justified to go off on him. The crew chief or team members didn't get his car working right during the race, so they deserved to be screamed at by him. He's always the victim in his own head, and therefore his actions and behavior are justified. Even if he realizes later on that he might have been a little out of line, he thinks the other person was out of line too so he's not the only one who should carry all the guilt.

They may not work directly for Nascar, but yes, they do so figuratively. The fines and penalties are no different than any other major sport. From the content of the article, it looks like Brad's learned a little life lesson about spouting off and running his mouth. He could have criticized Nascar in a more diplomatic way, gotten the same point across, and avoided the fines.

The league was right. The rule is there for a reason, and I'm sure the players are well aware of it. Like others said here, the team should have a plan in place.

And how do we know he didn't call purposely to get the fine? When he got home, I'm sure his wife felt obligated to put out knowing he just incurred a huge fine just to talk to her. $10,000 is too much for him to be paying for a hooker, but it's way cheaper than a divorce settlement.

Let him start and park. At least he's tried in the past to maintain an independent racing team that actually tries to race a whole race. He's also given us some pretty cool Nascar moments.

My favorite is when he was black flagged at a road race but refused to come off the track because he thought he'd been done wrong by Nascar (and he finished first). Robby doing burnouts after the race along with Harvick (the actual winner) was just awesome.

Montoya and Franchitti had much more successful careers to leave behind than Danica, but they came over to Nascar. I'm assuming (emphasis on assume) that they did it for the challenger, but she's probably doing it for the money.

Does anyone know if this move is going to make her more or less money?

Exactly. If they thought there weren't very good odds that she'd perform at least decently, then they wouldn't bother investing their money. If it weren't that way, we'd have a race field full of Victoria's Secret models and Playboy centerfolds every week. Which actually, is not a bad idea for the start and park teams.

JK....I'm not taking a shot at Kyle's ability when bringing him up. He's clearly one of the best drivers out there today and will win a championship or two during his career. It's all speculation of course but surely Kurt's name opened a couple doors for Kyle along his way. You never know how things may have turned out if he weren't related.

I just think when you've got JJ and Kahne racing against a bunch of minor leaguers (Nationwide-only drivers) and only 3 or 4 Cup regulars, then they'd better be knocking out top 10s. There's just no comparison. When's the last time a top 20 Cup regular raced all the races in the Nationwide series and finished lower than 5th in points? I don't know either because I stopped looking after going back to 2001 without finding any.

Why giver her a shot? Because she's proven she can drive a racecar. Because she's shown she's willing to learn. Because she's shown that she could be more than a start and parker. Because she's marketable. Because she's good for the sport (expanding the viewers).

The car still doesn't drive itself. And JJ and Kahne doing well in the car (racing against Nationwide drivers) doesn't mean much at all.

I'm not saying Danica's "all that", but there's just a lot of trash talk about her when she hasn't even been given a chance. Based on her average finish, she'd be in 8th place right now. If she was running a full schedule and had the luxury of sticking to one type of race car without having to switch back and forth, she'd be higher. I'm not saying she'll ever be successful in Sprint Cup or even make it, but why not give her a shot?

Right again. Kyle may actually never have made it. Just looking at Jimmie Johnson's Nationwide record alone, he was lucky to get into Sprint Cup. And funny you should mention Joey Logano because Mark Martin dubbing him "sliced bread" when he was 15 certainly opened some doors.

Yeah....I had never really thought about the connection between the large numbers of drivers coming over from other racing series and the lack of being able to develop drivers in Nationwide with so many Sprint drivers racing there. Hopefully the new championship system will change all that.

And I just realized another driver who no one ever mentions when it comes to having caught breaks because of who he knows or is related to. Kyle Busch. While he definitely has proven that he is worthy of racing in the series, he's probably had some extra opportunities and doors opened for him because of his brother's name. He still would have made it to Nascar, but it may have been a couple years later than he did.