In Most Places, It's Called Lying

Sometimes you plan an event but have to move it back or even cancel it because of unpredictable circumstances. Last weekend both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races were moved to Monday because Mother Nature had other plans. If you're running a sport, like the folks at NASCAR, there's nothing you can do about that. You just take your meteorological lumps and move on.

And then we have situations like the one NASCAR has with Fox.

If you go to NASCAR.com's official schedule, you will find that Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Talladega is scheduled to start at about 1 p.m. EDT. If you go to ESPN's NASCAR coverage, those folks will tell you the same thing. And the good folks at Yahoo Sports will essentially agree. (Yahoo even goes through the trouble of predicting that, after we get through the national anthem and the other usual stuff, the green flag will wave at 1:19 p.m. EDT.)

The only people who seem to have a different idea about the start of the race are the people broadcasting it.

If you watched the telecast of Monday's Samsung 500 for any length of time, you saw and heard Fox telling you to tune in Sunday for the race at Talladega -- at noon EDT. If you have satellite TV and try to look up the race, it will show you "NASCAR Racing" starting at noon EDT.

What it won't tell you is that Fox plans to spend the hour from noon to 1 p.m. EDT giving you previews, analysis, interviews and other stuff. When done well, these can all be informative and entertaining and even worth the fantasy racing fan's time. What they are not is coverage of the race itself.

Now, Fox Sports also covers the National Football League, and before each NFL game, it has folks like Jimmie Johnson and Terry Bradshaw give their insights, opinions and analysis. And if you look in your TV listings, you'll see this analysis is called "FOX NFL Sunday." You'll also see that the game itself is at its actual start time.

In other words, they call their pregame show a pregame show. They just don't call their prerace show a prerace show. Is it because Roger Goodell has more sway over Fox than NASCAR does? Or is it because he has less?

And a disclaimer for those reaching for their e-mail applications: This post has nothing to do with the politics and opinions of Fox Sports, Fox News or any other News Corp. holding or any of the people working there. You don't have to think anything at all -- good, bad or indifferent -- about Bill O'Reilly or Simon Cowell or Darrell Waltrip or anyone else to have an opinion about Fox Sports telling its viewers that the race starts an hour before it actually does.

We'll be back Wednesday with some facts about the race itself.