NASCAR “Gets Real” Again

Few things had gone right for the Spartanburg-based Phoenix racing team until the final lap Sunday.

Well, sort of.

Brad Keseloski’s win at Talladega is like the Tampa Bay Rays making the World Series or George Mason getting to the Final Four.  It was an upset of upsets by a team that has plans to run in only about half of the cup races this season (finances allowing) and was up against the usual group of mega-teams.

Of course, the victory came on the back end of one of the most horrific wrecks the sport has seen and could be considered tainted in the post-race conjecture by talking heads near and far. They’ll question if Keselowski should have given Card Edwards more space and so forth. 

Keselowski said he wasn’t going to back down, communicating that he wasn’t about to be intimidated by the veteran drivers in his fifth Cup race or The Establishment, for that matter.

And for at least one race in three dozen this season the little guy gets the trophy in a refreshing change of pace.  Instead of the typical winner getting to Victory Lane with his sentences spilled with ‘thanks to the sponsors’ and the typical “post-race speak” it was nice to see a bunch of folks who either hadn’t been there in years or really had no clue on how the process works.

It was refreshing to hear the team’s crew chief refer to his excitement about again being able to accomplish something in ‘Winston Cup Racing’, sheepishly correcting himself but clearly indicating just how long it had been since he’d had even a sliver of a spotlight.

Thankfully, the horrific finished led to no significant or long-term injuries to drivers or fans.  At the same time it was nice to see that NASCAR can still feel grass roots ever so often.

Another talker from the weekend is the outcome of the NFL Draft. 

Clemson’s James Davis dropped to the sixth round one year after many thought he should have jumped to the pros a year earlier and would have gone higher.

South Carolina’s Emmanuel Cook went undrafted after bypassing his senior season in Columbia.

If you make the aforementioned Davis argument I would think the counter to that would be Cook.  Not to say that Davis would have gone undrafted had he left school last year but more times than not, in what may be a surprising reality for some, what a player does in college means only so much to the NFL scouts.

Cook, no doubt, was unimpressive in some aspect of his workouts for them whether it was less speed than they’d like or a lateral movement issue or one of strength.  Could his status have improved this with one more year of college?  Possibly. 

In Davis’ case chances are he probably wouldn’t have fared much better in front of the scouts a year ago than he did this time.

Just a thought on the fact that all of the nice stats from a college career will usually not outweigh the up close “eye test” that anyone who’s considered for the draft will undergo.