The People's Choice - Texas

It doesn't matter how long or short the voting period is. You, the Internet, come out in droves to vote on the People's Pitstop's lineup week after week. Thanks to you, we have a roster of drivers to represent us at Saturday night's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway.
A List: It's a good thing we have two spots to offer from this poll, because it ended in a tie between Kevin Harvick (aka the winner of back to back races) and Matt Kenseth (aka the other guy to win this poll).
B List: He might not have a stock car win on an oval track yet, but Juan Pablo Montoya does have a win in a People's Pitstop poll. He beat a field that included Dale Earnhardt Jr., A.J. Allmendinger and Clint Bowyer, all of whom join him on this week's roster.
C List: Maybe you just like the color brown. Or maybe you're impressed that he finished in the top 10 last week at Martinsville. Either way, David Ragan is your winner here. He'll be joined in the lineup by a familiar C List face: Paul Menard.
As usual, the qualifying session will determine which of these racers start and which will ride the pine. Thanks for voting. The results appear below. And a new poll about everyone's favorite golf tournament is now available for voting.
We'll upate this post when the qualifying session is complete.
UPDATED 9:50 P.M. Maybe you voters should consider buying extra Powerball tickets this week. Ragan got his first career pole, and we got 10 bonus points for having the foresight to pick him. Bowyer qualified third and got us 3 bonus points, while Kenseth qualified fourth and got us a single bonus point. They'll be joined in the starting lineup by Montoya, who qualified a relatively modest 14th.
We'll be back with some fearless predictions.
[polldaddy poll=4845921] [polldaddy poll=4845935] [polldaddy poll=4845947]

How to Be Right and Wrong Simultaneously

You have a couple of hours left to vote on the People's Pitstop lineup for Saturday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway. While you contemplate your votes, let's consider something that may have gotten lost in the shuffle last week at Martinsville.
Some of you might have noticed that Jimmie Johnson has not won yet this season. (By comparison, by this point last season, the five-time defending Sprint Cup champion had won three times.) At Martinsville, Johnson was essentially taken out of contention when he incurred a speeding penalty on Pit Row. And he did not react well. At all. He climbed out of his car and essentially accused NASCAR of lying.
Yes, he later apologized and said his misunderstood where on Pit Row he was caught speeding. But he still raises two interesting points.
First, he showed one way NASCAR is just like any other sport in North America. There are plenty of examples in plenty of sports where someone criticizing officials or the sport's sanctioning body was punished for it. Johnson probably will not be suspended for what he said, but he should remember that NASCAR would be well within its rights to punish him for what he did.
Second, he showed one way in which NASCAR is unique among sporting bodies. And not in a good way.
You see, the main difference between Jimmie Johnson being busted for speeding at Martinsville and you being busted for speeding on your local interstate is the defense Johnson can give but you can't.
"I didn't know I was speeding."
Unlike the car sitting in your garage/driveway, the NASCAR machines do not have speedometers. The teams generally record the tachometer's reading during the pre-race laps and tell the driver to keep the RPMs under that level on Pit Row. But there's a reason your car has both a tachometer and a speedometer. A traffic cop who pulls you over is never going to ask you "Do you know how many revolutions your engine was turning?"
Johnson is hardly the first person to suggest that NASCAR give the drivers a more accurate tool to measure something so crucial to their chances of winning. And it would make sense for the sport's governing body to give its drivers as much information as possible about when they're going to break the rules. When the NFL fines a player for hitting another player out of bounds, it doesn't have to worry about the fined player saying, "I had no idea where the boundary was."
Again, you have a couple of hours to make your choices for this week's race. We'll be back with the results.

Evidence That Things Could Be Different

By now, most of America has digested Connecticut's all-time-ugly win over Butler for the national championship in college basketball, and we're waiting excitedly for a draft that may be the last action we see from the National Football League for a while. Many people also have had a chance to watch HBO's Real Sports put the NCAA through the journalism equivalent of a meat grinder. One thing that's clear from the report is that the NCAA isn't getting the job done when it comes to maintaining the integrity and amateurism of college basketball and football.
Of course, things don't have to be this way. To demonstrate that, it's time to take a look at an individual.
America, say hello to Lionel Messi.
Messi is a forward for FC Barcelona, one of the most powerful soccer clubs in Europe, a place that treats soccer more seriously than America treats any single sport. In 2009, Barcelona won the UEFA Champions League Final, Europe's answer to the Super Bowl, and Messi was named FIFA World Player of the Year, in part because he can do things like this with a ball. His current contract will pay him a salary of 10.5 million euros (just under $15 million) a year until 2016.
And he never had to step foot on a college campus.
Messi was so talented so early in his life that he was recruited from his native Argentina to join Barcelona's youth academy in 2000--at the age of 13. One of the things that lured Messi to the academy was the fact that it promised to pay for the drugs he needed to treat a hormone deficiency. (His height is officially listed at 5' 6 1/2".) And there was no NCAA to tell Barcelona that it couldn't offer him this extra benefit. Messi took classes at local schools and trained daily at the academy until he joined Barcelona's senior team in 2004. He has been there ever since.
And, if this report from London's Daily Mail is any indication, he was a relative latecomer to the academy. As Albert Capellas, Barcelona's senior youth coordinator, describes the soccer training, "From the age of seven to the age of 15 everything is about working with the football."
That's right; kids who won't be eligible for Little League for several years are training for a career in soccer. And they don't have to spend a second worrying about their eligibility.
Here in America, we do things differently. Kids can play professional hockey and baseball (and drive a NASCAR racecar) without taking English 101, but the NBA requires you to wait a year after your high school graduation. That means either taking your chances in Europe or playing by the NCAA's rules for at least a year. Likewise, the NFL makes you wait three years, and the NCAA doesn't have to worry about losing quarterbacks to Europe. And as long as people make money off college football and basketball, people are going to cheat at it.
Is the answer to let, say, the Green Bay Packers set up an academy? Maybe not. After all, Barcelona doesn't have a salary cap or a draft, and Americans aren't much better keeping their youth sports under control. ("Play Their Hearts Out," George Dohrmann's book on youth basketball, demonstrates that.) And then there's the fact that a lot of colleges use their football and men's basketball teams to finance the rest of their athletic programs, where trading four years of sweat for a debt-free bachelor's degree is actually a good deal.
But it might be time for us to stop expecting our colleges to serve as minor leagues for our professional sports. Amateurism is a lot easier to accept if you descend from aristocracy, as Baron Pierre de Coubertin did. For many others, turning down LeBron James-level money in exchange for a bachelor's degree may not be that good a deal anymore.
Disagree? Leave a comment at the link at the bottom of this post, and tell me what you think.

The Climb Continues

This week's NASCAR Sprint Cup race could have gone much better for the People's Pitstop, but we'll take what we got.
What the Internet's favorite fantasy racing team got was 255 points at Martinsville Speedway. The season total is now 1,568, and we moved up one spot, to fifth place, in the highly competitive 9beersfantasysportstavern group on Yahoo Sports. And here's how we did it.
Denny Hamlin: Started 5th, finished 12th, 89 laps led and 78 fantasy points. Hamlin surprised even the experts by having to pit early and being less than his usually dominant self in Martinsville.
A.J. Allmendinger: Started 6th, finished 14th, 6 laps led and 74 fantasy points. Mr. Allmendinger was one of only two Ford drivers to lead this race. Maybe they should fetch some of the cars they lent to American Idol.
David Ragan: Started 14th, finished 8th and 76 fantasy points. Ironically, the People's Pitstop's only top 10 starting driver at the finish was also the only one who did not lead a lap.
And yes, we've saved the worst for last.
Kasey Kahne: Started 3rd, finished 39th (281 laps behind the leaders), 1 lap led and 27 fantasy points. To the long list of things you never want to hear about your NASCAR driver, you can add this gem from Mike Joy: "That might be the hardest hit I've ever seen at this small a race track."
Everybody walked away, though, and now they can walk (or fly, really) to Fort Worth for a Saturday night shootout at Texas Motor Speedway. The lineup polls for the People's Pitstop are now open, but they will close Thursday night, so we can submit a roster in time for Friday's qualifying session. Please vote now. We'll be back.
(Oh, and by the way, here are the results for the Final Four poll. Apparently, the people who read this poll are not into underdogs.)
[polldaddy poll=4832562]

Fearless Predictions - Martinsville

As Sunday dawns on the People's Pigskin, two things are clear: Two of the choices in the Final Four poll no longer make sense, and it's time to make a fresh set of predictions for top 10 finishers at this week's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville Speedway.
The people who bring you this blog are in a bit of a slump. For the third week in a row, last week's predictions went a pedestrian 1-3, leaving us with a very pedestrian season record of 3-9. I'd blame it on the margaritas, but our trip to Vegas is over. Oh, well. Here goes.
One from the front: Three of the People's Pitstop's starting drivers (Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin and A.J. Allmendinger) start in the top 10, so they're ineligible for the forecasts. We'll go with the driver who sits second both in today's lineup and in the point standings. Ryan Newman gets the call.
One from the back: The usual gang of idiots populate the back 10 this week. Since there are no obvious candidates for moving up into the top 10, we'll go with a feel-good story. Hermie Sadler, a native of nearby Emporia, Virginia, is taking Andy Lally's spot in the number 71 car. What the heck--we'll back him.
Two from the middle: Fate (and the qualifying session) made these two choices much easier. We'll take current points leader Carl Edwards, who starts 23rd, and Jimmie Johnson, who starts 17th, nearly won last week and ... well, you already know the resume.
Enjoy the race, and don't forget to vote in the Final Four poll. We'll be back with the racing results.

The People's Choice - Martinsville

We're back from our sojourn in Las Vegas. We'd like to tell you all about the ultimate margaritas, the Michael Jackson impersonator, the world's dumbest roulette player, the 70 beers, the roller coaster, the lions and the man lying unconscious on the Strip, but what happens there stays there. (Really, it's in the contract.)
It's back to work for the People's Pitstop, but you, the Internet, did not take this week off. You came out and selected a lineup for Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville Speedway. Here are your results.
A List. You must have seen something in Jimmie Johnson's near-win last week in Fontana. The five-time defending Sprint Cup champion won this poll, followed by Denny Hamlin.
B List: This race was a lot closer. Three drivers (Juan Pablo Montoya, Martin Truex Jr. and Kasey Kahne) tied for first place, while A.J. Allmendinger came in fourth. Good thing we have four spots -- two starting and two bench -- to give them.
C List: Only two drivers received votes in this poll. One of them, surprise, surprise, was Paul Menard. The other was David Ragan. You know the drill by now. Whoever qualifies better will start. The other one will sit.
Thanks again for voting. The results appear below, and a new poll about college basketball's big event is available for voting. We will update this post after the qualifying session.
UPDATED 2 P.M. Kahne has spent a lot of time on our bench this season. Not this week; he qualified 3rd and earned the People's Pitstop 3 bonus points. The other starters are Hamlin (5th), Allmendinger (6th) and Ragan (14th). That's right; Paul Menard, who qualified 16th, finally gets a seat on the bench.
We'll be back with a fresh set of predictions.
[polldaddy poll=4801881] [polldaddy poll=4801961] [polldaddy poll=4802021]

We're in the Groove Now

The people who bring you this fine blog aren't faring so well at roulette, but the People's Pitstop is doing quite well on the track.
The Internet's favorite fantasy NASCAR team scored 330 points during Sunday's Sprint Cup race in Fontana. Our season total is now 1,313, and we moved up 1 spot, to 6th place, in the 9beersfantasysportsforum group.
Here is a slightly detailed breakdown.
Jimmie Johnson: Started 16th, finished 2nd, 3 laps led and 98 fantasy points. He'll probably campaign to have next year's race be a lap shorter.
Ryan Newman: Started 9th, finished 5th, 8 laps led and 92 fantasy points. Ryan just keeps chugging along. Remember that we get to use him only 9times this season.
Juan Pablo Montoya: Started 1st, finished 10th, 7 laps led and 92 fantasy points. For fantasy players, he may not be just for road courses anymore.
David Ragan: Started 6th, finished 22nd and 48 fantasy points. We can hardly complain this week about our C list driver being the only one not to lead a lap.
Now we move from the 2-mile oval of Auto Club Speedway to the half-mile grind of Martinsville Speedway. The new lineup polls are now open and will close Friday. Please vote now.

Fearless Predictions - Fontana

This version of the fearless predictions will be brief, since the people who bring you this blog are in Las Vegas (BABY!) and will be watching this week's Sprint Cup race from one of the various sports books available here.
Here's hoping our luck at the blackjack table is better than our luck so far with these predictions for NASCAR drivers who will finish in the top 10. Once again, last week's forecasts went a pitiful 1-3, leaving us with a season record of 2-8. But here come another set of predictions anyway.
One from the front: We're going with someone who always seems to do well at tracks the size of Auto Club Speedway. Tony Stewart starts in fifth place and should be able to at least hold on to that spot.
One from the back: It's not the strongest of fields this week, in part because only 43 cars signed up for this race, so everybody qualified. When in doubt, you go with a former Sprint Cup champion. And we'll go with Bobby Labonte, who starts 34th.

Two from the middle: Lots of drivers to choose from here. Our choices are the current points leader, Kurt Busch, who starts 23rd, and Jimmie Johnson, who starts 16th and owns the Fontana track.

Enjoy the race, everybody. We'll be back with results.

The People's Choice - Fontana

Some people are getting ready to watch college kids compete for spots in the Final Four. Some are getting ready for the start of baseball season, the only season that holds a candle to NASCAR's in terms of length. But we at the People's Pigskin are thanking you, the Internet, for coming out again in droves to vote on our lineup. Here are the drivers that will represent the People's Pitstop this weekend in Fontana, California.
A List: The winner of this poll is someone who was winning back when Charlie Sheen was just a guy in a troubled marriage. Five-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson took this poll. He and Carl Edwards will compete during qualifying for a chance to start for the Internet's favorite fantasy NASCAR team on Sunday.
B List: Don't let people tell you stock car racing is strictly for Americans. This poll was won by Colombia's Juan Pablo Montoya. The runners-up were some usual suspects (Ryan Newman and Kasey Kahne), but the final spot went to a Tasmanian named Marcos Ambrose. The two drivers who qualify the best will start.
C List: UPS representative David Ragan won this poll, followed by Bobby Labonte.
Thanks once again for voting. The results appear below, and a new poll on rule changes is available for your votes now. We'll try to update this post once the qualifying session is over.
UPDATED 9:45 P.M. You guys are good. And so is Montoya, who took the pole and will earn us a 10-point bonus. He's joined in the starting lineup by Ragan (who qualified 6th), Newman (9th) and Johnson (16th).
[polldaddy poll=4759885] [polldaddy poll=4759909] [polldaddy poll=4759927]

The Not-So-Golden Rules

In addition to helmets and short fuses, one thing that both NASCAR and the National Football League have in common right now are rule changes.
And in both cases, the changes have more than a few critics.
First, let's deal with the NFL (while there still is one). The owners approved a few rule alterations this week. One of those changes is to bring kickoffs back to the 35-yard line. The idea is that giving the kicker 5 fewer yards of playing area will produce more touchbacks. And who doesn't love the idea of watching more touchbacks and fewer plays like this.
No matter which NFL team you follow, you can find a coach who doesn't like the change. And it's not hard to understand why. The goal might be keeping players safe, but those coaches who don't simply surrender to the urge to kick balls out of the end zone will simply tell the kicker to shorten the kick and try to pin the receiver deep. Players will still be injured, as they have been since the pigskin really WAS made from pig.
Now for the NASCAR changes. The revamp that France & Co. approved to their scoring system is summarized here. I say "summarized" because if the new system had any more 'if's, 'and's or 'but's, it would be a grammar textbook.
NASCAR tells us that the system is supposed to emphasize winning. That, of course, explains why the current points leader has no wins and only one top five finish so far this season. And please note that the wild card spots are available only to drivers who finish in the top 20. That would mean that if the Chase were to start right now, one of the four drivers who have won a race so far this season would not be in NASCAR's version of the playoffs.
Oh, and did I mention that the driver in question -- the one currently sitting 43rd in the new and/or improved points system -- won the alleged Super Bowl of NASCAR?
By the way, you still have a couple of hours to vote on the lineup polls on the right side of this page. Your votes, and your votes alone, will determine which drivers will represent the People's Pitstop at Sunday's NASCAR race in Fontana, California.
We'll be back with the results.