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03/17/2010 - Bristol, TN (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Series: NASCAR Sprint Cup. Date: Sunday, March 21. Race: Food City 500. Site: Bristol Motor Speedway. Track: .533-mile oval. Start time: 1:00 p.m. (et). Laps: 500. Miles: 266.5. 2009 winner: Kyle Busch. Television: FOX. Radio: Performance Racing Network (PRN)/SIRIUS NASCAR Radio.
After taking the first off-weekend of the season, the Sprint Cup Series will return to Bristol, and all eyes will be focused on Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski.
Edwards begins his three-race probation period at Bristol. The Roush Fenway Racing driver avoided suspension after he deliberately hit Keselowski from behind and sent him flying upside down into the frontstretch wall last week at Atlanta.
Both drivers had an earlier encounter in the Atlanta race when Keselowski clipped Edwards and shot him up the track before he hit the wall. Edwards spent most of the event behind the wall, but retaliated against Keselowski shortly after he returned to the track. NASCAR immediately parked him for the altercation.
Atlanta was the latest in an on-going feud between Edwards and Keselowski. The issues between the two began last April when Keselowski hit Edwards from behind and sent him airborne into the wall during the final lap at Talladega. NASCAR plans to meet with both drivers and their team owners on Friday before Bristol track activities begin.
Will the Edwards-Keselowski rivalry continue at Bristol? It will make for an interesting weekend, as the two also compete in Saturday's Nationwide Series race.
Bristol recently underwent a track modification, with the addition of more than 160 feet of Steel and Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) barriers. Track personnel extended the "soft wall" by three feet at the exits of turns two and four. The modification at the high-banked, half-mile track comes nearly three years after a fresh layer of concrete and four feet of additional width led to multiple racing grooves there.
With less room to move, drivers will have to adjust to the traditional style of racing at Bristol -- a lot of beating and banging.
"I like all the room that you can get at some of these race tracks, so that's going to make it tough," said Kyle Busch, who won both Cup races at Bristol last year. "They did it for the excitement of the racetrack and try to put some bumping and grinding back into that place. The exits were already tight with these cars. It's going to slow down the pace probably a little bit, because we don't have as much room on the exits to use. Maybe it will make for better racing. I'm hoping so."
Jeff Gordon, a five-time race winner at Bristol, thinks the barriers will make a considerable difference in racing at Bristol, but drivers should adjust to it quickly.
"We use every inch of that race track," Gordon said. "It is definitely going to be unique. I am anxious to get there and see how many right sides we take off the first hour of practice. It is like anything else, eventually you get used to it."
Heading into Bristol, Kevin Harvick holds a 26-point lead over Matt Kenseth and a 59-point advantage over Greg Biffle. All three drivers have recorded top-10 finishes in the first four races this season.
Four-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson, who won at California and Las Vegas last month, has moved up to fourth in points (-74) following his 12th-place run at Atlanta.
Bristol is one of six tracks where Johnson has yet to win.
"We're getting close," Johnson said. "It's taken a lot from me as a driver to change my habits in the way I drive that race track and really drive any race track. I've had to completely switch over to a different driving style. It was easy for us to look at what had worked for [Gordon's team] for so many years, but I just couldn't make that work. Our styles are so different that I couldn't make it work."
The spring race at Bristol is the first of six short-track events on the season schedule. Next week, the series will run at Martinsville.
Forty-five teams are on the preliminary entry list for the Food City 500.
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My fellow Americans, as tempting as it may be to don the coat and HD-ready tie in order to deliver this State of the Game address before the cameras, I know better. As Brad Paisley sings on his latest album, "I'm so much cooler online."
The ideas for this annual essay to kick off the MySportsbook.com college football betting preview flowed like frat-house beer, which is to say they were cheap and spilled all over the floor. The 2007 season will be better than 2007, if only because there will be more of it. A year ago, the NCAA Football Rules Committee made two rule changes in the interest of speeding up the game. These changes went over like Kobe burgers at a vegan banquet.
To its credit, the rules committee rectified its mistakes. This season the clock once again will start when a kickoff is received, rather than when it is kicked, and the clock will not start so quickly on a change of possession.
However, kickoffs have been moved back five yards, to the 30, which will force more returns. (Thus forcing the clock to run. Clever, huh?) Special teams might decide a lot of games, because coaching strategy will come straight out of another new Paisley lyric (almost), I'd like to check you for kicks.
Paisley sings with a twang, which is why he's appropriate for this college football season. The sun coming up over the 2007 college football betting lines season rises from the south. It's a Southern football world. As the Southeastern Conference begins its 75th year, the power shift is noticeable.
Eight-figure budgets, glamorous settings -- and that's just for the head coaches. The SEC has four coaches who have won national championships -- the greatest aggregation of coaching know-how since Eddie Robinson dined alone.
Steve Spurrier, Phil Fulmer, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer have given lie to the idea that a conference championship game is too daunting a hurdle on the road to No. 1. In six of the past 10 seasons, the national champions played and won a conference championship game -- three of the six (Tennessee, 1998; LSU, 2003; Florida, 2007) from the SEC.
There will be more of the same this season, if the preseason prognostications are correct. Six SEC teams are in the preseason coaches' poll, more than from any other conference. Only one conference has talent so deep that a team with 15 returning starters, including the best quarterback in the league, from an eight-win season is considered an afterthought. That may speak more to Kentucky's losing legacy than to the wisdom of the predictions, but there you have it. And seriously, keep an eye on Wildcats QB Andre' Woodson.
The reach of the South extends all the way to No. 1. Take a look at the team that is a consensus pick to win the national championship. The quarterback is from Shreveport. The best wide receiver is from Nashville. The top recruit is from New Orleans.
So what's the campus doing in Los Angeles? Hey, it is the University of Southern California.
USC lost two Pacific-10 Conference games a year ago, the first time that had happened in five seasons, and university officials withstood the urge to form blue-ribbon panels to unearth the cause of such a disaster. Instead, the Trojans gathered themselves and routed Michigan, 32-18, in the Rose Bowl.
USC's losses at Oregon State and at UCLA last year should have given pause to those who question the Pac-10's football prowess (such as, without naming names, L.M. from Baton Rouge). The league only got deeper this season; Dennis Erickson is taking over an Arizona State team that never quite got out of its own way under his predecessor, Dirk Koetter.
Erickson will resume his quest to become the first coach to win a national championship at two schools. Both he and Spurrier, now in his third season at South Carolina, returned to college football at schools with lower profiles than where they won their titles.
That isn't the case for the third coach looking for the national championship double. You may have missed this, but NASA reported the astronauts on the space shuttle last spring made contact with what can only be described as beings from another galaxy.
The leader of the aliens said, "We come in peace," followed by, "So how do you think Nick Saban will do at Alabama?"
The public is reacting to the new Crimson Tide coach as if he is the Barry Bonds of college football -- beloved at home for what his fans believe he is going to do, hated on the road for his intimidating attitude and for what his detractors believe he did (bend NCAA recruiting rules). I made this comparison from the dais at a charity dinner in Mobile, Ala., last month, and the chill that washed over me didn't come from the air conditioning.
Saban will attempt to prove that he can remake in Tuscaloosa what he built in Baton Rouge, much like another member of the national championship fraternity. Bobby Bowden is attempting to remake at Florida State what he built at, um, Florida State. Bowden rebuilt his offensive staff, bringing in four new coaches led by Saban's former offensive coordinator, Jimbo Fisher, to jump-start an offense that has been dead for a couple of years.
The Atlantic Coast Conference is expected to show new signs of life, too. That is said with no disrespect toward last season's champion, Wake Forest, which provided one of the best story lines of 2007. The Demon Deacons begin this season in their customary position, overshadowed by the Virginia Techs, Miamis and Florida States.
It's not that Wake will find it difficult to duplicate its success in 2007 as much as the feeling that success engendered. Surprising success is the narcotic of sport. It never feels quite so euphoric the next time. Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese has figured this out. He refers to 2007, when a league looked down upon by fans and foes alike took three undefeated teams into November, as "Cinderella."
The fairy tale may be over, but the Big East has four genuine Heisman Trophy candidates in Louisville quarterback Brian Brohm, West Virginia tailback Steve Slaton and quarterback Pat White, and Rutgers tailback Ray Rice. Rutgers, as did Wake Forest and, of course, Boise State, proved last season that the have-nots in college football occasionally have quite a lot.
The Broncos' rousing 43-42 overtime victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl has raised the profile of all schools in conferences that don't get automatic BCS bids. This season, TCU and Hawaii are the preseason favorites to burst through the BCS doors and earn an at-large bid. The Warriors return 14 starters from an 11-3 team, including quarterback Colt Brennan.
Brennan not only broke the single-season record with 58 touchdown passes in 2007, but he also led Division I-A in passing efficiency (186.0). The senior is expected to contend for the Heisman Trophy, and neither his success nor the rise of his team should come as any surprise in the 2007 season.
After all, Hawaii is the southernmost team in the country.
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