JJ all day

 Watched a little of that new hit series yesterday, and I have to say, this Jimmie Johnson Show might have legs. Among his guests were Alex Palou, the exuberant 24-year-old Spaniard who'll make a splendid sidekick for J.J., and Chip Ganassi, who'll gush in all the right places about J.J. just like Ed McMahon used to for Johnny Cars--

I'm sorry, what was that?

This wasn't the Jimmie Johnson Show I was watching?

Well, OK. If you say so.

I mean, yes, I know it was actually the season opener for IndyCar, the Grand Prix of Alabama, which heralded the arrival of a couple of fresh almost-new faces, Palou and Patricio O'Ward of Arrow McLaren. O'Ward started on the pole, got hamstrung by bad pit strategy, then came roaring back in the closing laps to finish fourth. And he was right on third-place finisher Scott Dixon's pipes when the checkers fell,

And Palou?

Went to the front in the first pit shuffle, went back in front after the last pit shuffle, and not even seasoned charger Will Power could catch him at the end. It was a sterling debut for the kid as part of Ganassi's stable; besides him, only Michael Andretti and the late Dan Wheldon won their first starts for Chip.

It capped a day in which three Ganassi drivers came home in the top eight positions. The fourth, of course, was Jimmie Johnson, who finished three laps down in 19th despite the impression left by NBC that Sunday really was the Jimmie Johnson Show.

He starred in the pre-race coverage. He starred in the commercials. Dixon, the defending IndyCar champion -- and six-time champ overall -- was compelled to talk not about himself but his new teammate. And during the race, an in-car camera tracked Johnson's  every move among the backmarkers. 

Shoot. He might have the been the first IndyCar driver ever to have an in-car camera while starting 21st on the grid.

Hard to blame either NBC or its IndyCar partner in crime for this, of course. A seven-time NASCAR champion jumping to IndyCar at the age of 45 is a huge story, not to say the sort of promotional hook a racing series starving for pub could hardly resist. So naturally they squeezed as much juice from it as they could.

For those of us who've been around IndyCar for a spell, though, there was not entirely pleasant sense of deja vu to all of it. It felt uncomfortably like Danica Mania all over again, IndyCar trying to make some hot new ticket the face of the sport before the hot new ticket had earned that distinction.

It was grossly unfair to Danica then, because she was just another young driver still learning her trade. And it's unfair to J.J. now, because, while he's not at all young, he, too, is learning this new trade.

That he'll undoubtedly handle the attention with more aplomb than Danica occasionally did is a given, of course. She was 24-years-old and green as spring grass; he's 45 and the greatest NASCAR racer of his generation. So he's got that going for him.

One would hope, however, that as the season goes along it won't be quite so all-J.J.-all-the-time. Because as Palou and O'Ward demonstrated Sunday, the kids are gonna be a hell of a show, too -- and there's a whole fistful of them waiting to bust out.

And that'll be must-see TV, too.