Daytona eclipsed

 The Daytona 500 goes off this afternoon in Florida, if it doesn't rain. Which it might, I'm told. Or might not. I honestly don't know.

This is something I thought I'd never say.

I thought I'd never say it because it implies I don't care enough about the Daytona 500 to see what the weather's like down there, and that is a sad admission. It reflects my overall disinterest in NASCAR in general, which has been building by slow degrees for years now.

Just as America's seemingly has, I might add.

Time was NASCAR was a growth industry so spectacular it briefly fancied itself the nation's fourth major sport, but that was a quarter century ago. It's still a national sport that plays everywhere from the Los Angeles Coliseum to Martinsville, Va., and Bristol, Tenn., and it still commands a hefty national television contract and audience. But it's no longer the appointment viewing it once was.

The Bristol night race, one of NASCAR's marquee events and toughest-to-get tickets, was still hawking "Good Seats Available" almost until race time a few years back. Crowds for the Brickyard 400, one of Cup racing's crown jewels but a consistently sleep-inducing bore, dwindled to the point IMS and NASCAR moved it to the road course a couple of years ago. 

The 10-race end-of-season playoff, meanwhile, more and more is fully eclipsed by the ravenous NFL beast, which puts everything else in shadow in the fall.

I didn't watch a single playoff race last fall, for instance. Didn't even watch the finale in Phoenix, where Ryan Blaney gave Roger Penske the Cup championship to go with Josef Newgarden's win in the Indianapolis 500.

And Daytona?

I still watch it every year, but it's not like it used to be. Used be it was an Event, one of those days when you got together with friends and pounded beers and cheered for Jeff or Jimmie or Ryan Newman or the Intimidator. Wasn't quite like the Super Bowl, but it was close.

Now I watch it by myself, and it's the only NASCAR race I watch each year. And I watch it as much for what it represents to me -- the first whisper of spring during the gray weary winter -- as for who wins or who doesn't or who triggers the multi-car demolition derby NASCAR types call The Big One.

Today I might not even do that.

Today I can't even tell you if it will rain or not, and I for sure can't tell you who I think will win. All I can say is the guy on the pole, Joey Logano, probably won't.  That's because the pole winner never wins Daytona, or at least hasn't since Dale Jarrett did it 24 years ago. And that's because it's a total crapshoot that almost always comes down to who gets the right push at the right time, same as any other restrictor plate race.

So I'll just go ahead and pick some guy named Christopher Bell. Why not?

I mean, I don't know a thing about him, but that's no surprise. I don't know a thing about William Byron or Tyler Reddick or Austin Dillon or Ross Chastain, either, or various and sundry Erik Joneses and Daniel Sanchezes. They're all just names to me, which is part of NASCAR's problem right now. 

The names geezers like me knew -- Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson and now Kevin Harvick -- have retired or mostly retired. The new names have yet to become Names. And so I know who Austin Cindric is because his daddy's Tim Cindric and he won Daytona in 2022.  And I know who Chase Elliott is because his daddy's Bill Elliott and he won the Cup a couple years back. And I know Logano and Kyle Larson and some of the others who've been around for awhile.

Christopher Bell I do not.

But he sounds like a good dude and I hear he turns a pretty fast wheel, so what the hell. I  just hope he's up there in the lead freight train when I finally tune in with 20 or so laps to go -- because that's all you really need to watch every year, and, besides, I've got other stuff going on this afternoon.

IU-Northwestern comes on at 3 p.m., you see. And my wife loves her Hoosiers, even when they don't love her back. 

The Daytona 500?

Eh. It'll keep.