Life Is Way More Important Than Sports

I don't know whether you have heard the sad new of a Nash Central football player dying over the weekend.  There can be no worse thing to happen to any parent in their life than to lose a child regardless of their age before that parent goes.  When your child is still in the nest  it seems as so much was yet to be done.  The training process was not yet done.

As we all have been through our school years we must face times when we can't figure out why?  My senior year in high school five boys were kill three of them in my senior class died in a wreck six days before high school graduation.  We asked why?

All students at Nash Central and those familiar with the young man are stunned  at the shortness life can be.  Teenagers have no conception what ever with how short life is until it slaps you in the face.

A teammate has been lost to the Bulldog football team.  Injuries are a part of the game, but death is a part of life.  Death sticks a knife in your heart to carry forever while an injury to a teammate you can watch as he recovers. 

There is a verse in the Bible that says God will not give you anything that you can't handle.  Those that knew John Stanley the handle part will not be easy.  You know his parents, classmates, teammates and friends will all carry a burden during the healing process.

There is no better way to heal than to pray.  There is something about getting down on your knees  asking God for help.  I pray today for John's parents.  They will carry a void in their heart for the rest of their life.  I pray for all those  classmates who he was part of their every day routine.  I pray for team mates who sweated with him  and had goals together.

Most of all I pray for John.  We all who profess to be Christian people have questions which we know not the answer.  I pray that what has happen to John Stanley will lead someone who has a lost soul can find the way.

Most of all I pray that the healing  from this life lost has already begun. Amen

Nascar, It Needs Fixin

Nascar was born out of the souped up jalopies that ran from the revenuers with boot leg whiskey.  The early years Nascar raced somewhere every weekend and sometimes on Saturday and hitched up the wagon we are going to race again tomorrow somewhere else.  It was  a Redneck sport that had it roots in North Carolina.

Once TV found out that the people who wore coats and ties would watch it on TV, Nascar went through a period where it was the fastest growing sport in America. TV learned to love  Dale Earnhardt because when he knocked somebody sideways the TV ratings soared.

Sometimes when the getting is good and TV made the good and Nascar thought, most people watch because they want to see a wreck.  They wanted  the cars to break up in a thousand pieces but nobody wants to see somebody killed on live TV.  Then Nascar got to messing up.  They started making all the car just alike with the only difference was the color of the paint job on the outside.

The TV networks started fighting over who was going to cover this weeks race.  When ESPN carried the whole season you knew where the race was every week on TV.  Then Fox said we want all the races up to the NFL season  so all of a sudden Benny Parson was only on the races half the time.  Daryl Waldrip only went bogiety, bogiety, bogiety some of the time.

Then the worse of all, Nascar thought that Kansas City needed a race track that looked just like Charlotte so they built more Charlotte race tracks in Texas, California and Chicago.  In order to do that they had to close  the bread and butter tracks that weaned Nascar at Rockingham, Nashville and North Wilksboro. They even took the Southern 500 away from Darlingon on Labor Day.  Now every Sunday instead of the bump and rub races at the short tracks they drive around Charlotte every Sunday.  Nascar has become boring.

Nascar has tried to have a ten race playoff but how can you have a playoff when all the teams play in the playoffs until the last lap of the last race.  Nascar needs to change the playoffs and put pressure on everybody to run up front every week and here's my answer to Nascar.

Give the leader of the points race 43 points starting with the first playoff race and give the 43rd car in the standings one point.  The very first playoff race give the winner 43  points and last place one point.  ChicagoLand was the first playoff race Monday.  The winner Tony Stewart should get 43 for winning and last place one point.  Who ever has the lowest total points is eliminated.  All of a sudden if Jeff Gordon has two bad races  when the field is whittled to 40 he might not race  for the rest of the year just like any other playoff format.  Race two more races drop it down to only 35 cars race.  Then each week eliminate a couple of more cars  from there to the last race.  It makes Nascar playoff just like any other sport or as close as they can get it..  You have a bad three races you are out.  It is possible that the 43rd place driver if he has the ten greatest races of his life wins the championship.  Isn't that what the Green Bay Packers did last year in the NFl, had a hot playoffs?

This letting a 43rd place driver wreck me the last race of the season when I have a chance to win the title and the only reason he's racing is for his sponsor has got to go.  Let's put some excitement back in Nascar. Nascar needs a true playoff.