Know How I Know NASCAR Isn’t A Sport?

I wanted to post a picture of NASCAR fans, but didn't want to ugly up the page

Hillbillies, rednecks, hill people and southerners unite!  Now is the time to stream out of your huts, shacks, lean-to’s and trailers and let the hate pour from your tobacco stained mouths.  This man is telling you that NASCAR is not a sport and drivers aren’t athletes.  How dare he?  Doesn’t he know that drivers lose like 120-pounds every race, except for Tony Stewart who inexplicably gains 20lbs?  Can’t he see the precision these men maneuver with at 200mph?  They almost never crash…all the time.  Won’t he admit that drivers win consistently, not because they have the best car, but because they are the best driver…with the best car…and not necessarily the best driver?

Even if I were to concede those points to you people of the land, I would still have one serious nail in the ‘NASCAR is a sport’ theory’s coffin.  NASCAR drivers, who are supposedly the greatest drivers the world has ever seen, can’t even begin to compete at a high level while drunk.  Know how I know?  AJ Allmendinger, an alleged NASCAR driver, ‘alleged’ because I’ve never heard of him, was arrested this morning on a charge of drunken driving.

Allmendinger was pulled over by police, which doesn’t necessarily mean his driving was erratic and he was visibly inebriated, but it probably means that.  He then failed a field sobriety test, which is basically an athletic test, so there’s another strike for NASCAR.  Michael Vick passes field sobriety tests for fun.  When he’s tanked in the backseat and his friend gets pulled over, Vick switches places with him so he can take the sobriety test.  When they tell him to stand on one foot and count backwards from 100, Mike does a back-flip and raps Gin and Juice backwards.

The kicker for Allmendinger is that he wasn’t even that drunk.  He wasn’t coming from a three-day bender that ended with an attempt to drink the Irish Shot-Taking Team under the table.  He was coming from a casual dinner where he had ‘a couple of drinks’ with his dinner.  As any cop will inform you, when someone tells you they’ve ‘only had a couple of drinks’, it’s time to get the breathealyzer ready.  Still, the fact that he just ate means he couldn’t have been that drunk.  And he still couldn’t drive well enough to keep from being pulled over.  And he drives for a living.  That’s just plain embarrassing.  He probably thinks he’s doing himself and his image a favor by saying he wasn’t really drunk, but rather was just barely over the legal limit, but I think he’d be more in demand if he said he was about a .35 BAC and was doing 145 when the police caught him.

Some of you might be saying that no athlete would be able to compete at a high level while inebriated, but let me tell you who disagrees.  David Wells was drunk when he pitched a perfect game.  Not only did he do his job, but he did it better than 99-percent of everyone else who has ever done it.  Most of the NBA was on coke for years.  I know coke-heads dunking on coke-heads isn’t amazingly impressive, but they can still dunk.  Plus, coke-head ball is way more entertaining than NASCAR.  Andre Agassi spent a year of his career on crystal-meth.  Sure, he dropped to 141 in the world rankings, but being one of the best 150 tennis players in the world while tweaked is pretty damn good.  Judging by Allmendinger’s lack of success, I doubt any NASCAR driver would be able to do that well while blitzed.

Of course, Jeremy Mayfield allegedly drove in NASCAR and did meth.  How can I explain that?  I can’t, but when your best argument contains the fact that someone from your organization is a chronic user of methamphetamines, I’d say you’ve lost the war.

Tags: AJ Allmendinger, NASCAR, racing

1 Comment to Know How I Know NASCAR Isn’t A Sport?

Greg Delaney
November 1, 2009

c’mon now, shifting can get tiresome after awhile…

Leave a comment