by richard teague tinynascars@yahoo.com
Pools-Pools-Pools, Everywhere Pools! Ya we got swimming pools, wading pools and one named after a guy called “cess,” but those aren’t the kind I’m talking about. The ones I am thinking of are the Super Bowl and the NASCAR variety that are flooding the workplace and the Internet this time of year. With just a few days before the Big Game, it seems that everywhere I go some friend of mine has a sheet of paper with an envelope attached to it with dollar bills inside and wants to know: “Hey Tiny, ya want in the pool?” I’ll ask how much, and if it’s not too big a buy in, I’ll throw a few bucks in so someone I don’t even know can win it and buy themselves a few things. I mean heck it’s just put your name in a square and hope the luck-of-the-draw will bring your money back with some more, but I don’t think I have ever won one of those deals.
You’ll see a hundred little boxes with this guy’s name or that girl’s name and you know you’re just throwing those two bucks away. Or, if I get bold, I’ll put a fiver in, but only one square for me, thank you. Then ya sit and wait for the ringleader at your office or station house to get the list back with the numbers down two sides and then it’s time to watch the game to see if you win. Who cares about any of the teams, just let me get in the pool. Photocopy the numbers so you know what you have to look for. It’s not too bad, but it seems I never hear anything again until a few days after the game when I ask who won and the guy says, “Oh, somebody over at Joe’s Used Cars.” You mean Joe’s over there in Georgia? How in the world did he get in it?
Well you know how Joe got in it. They faxed a copy to him and then someone went by there to pick up his money and now that same guy is going to run it back over there next week. I bet ya ole Joe slips that fellow a tenner for his trouble, you think? Then there are those ones where you go online and join up on a web site to play “Fantasy Super Bowl Pool.” That ain’t too bad, cause its free, but you don’t win nothing and the website keeps all the information you gave them to sign up. Totally secured and they don’t share it with nobody, right? Well how come last year, after I did that, I started getting about a hundred times more emails in my spam folder and all these strange offers for Rxs and “hey, you won” this or that. My favorite is the “Barrister” from Tim-Buck-Too that says he’s got 300 million U.S. dollars and needs to give them to somebody so if I send him my bank account number I will receive it.
I have sent my account number to over fifty different email addresses and I ain’t seen the first million yet, but I do keep my hopes up and I check my EMPTY bank account almost everyday. I mean after the first offer came in, I went right down to the local bank and opened up one and told them to get ready because the real money was forthcoming. And let me tell y’all another thing, if you need any kind of Rx drugs for what ails ya, well I’m your man because I got every single person this side of the sun offering me drugs from that email address. They got the best deals you can get anywhere ,and then again, it’s the old “send us your bank account or credit card number and the script will be in the mail.” Now I did fall off a turnip truck once, but that was a very long time ago and I sure hope you all don’t believe I answer them ads, and y’all better not either.
Man did I get off on a wild rant there. Back to the pools and let me get the suntan lotion on. Now the pool I like the best is the racing pool, but then again I don’t seem to win anything. You would think that I could since I am a NASCAR columnist and got that inside line and all. Maybe I have been playing the wrong type of NASCAR pool, like the ones at those websites or the one I got in on with my friend Curtis. He had a different twist on his and it seemed like a fair enough way to lose ten bucks a week. I really thought I had a chance, NOT!! Didn’t even come close one time, unless you count having Jeff and Tony one week when neither even got a top ten. Then the next week one of them won the dang race. Story of our lives, ain’t it mates and bubbas and bubba-ettes?
Now this year all that is going to change. I started a new job a few months back and they got this here NASCAR pool that there ain’t no way I can lose, well almost ain’t no way. Here’s how it works. You get a list (yeah I know) from a guy in the office (but hey it ain’t the same one with the Super Bowl pool so my odds have just increased by about two hundred percent) and on this list are all the car numbers and the drivers that are assigned to those cars. You get to pick who you want. Simple ain’t it? And you get them for the whole season. I forgot to mention that you have to pay these guys to “driver” for you, it’s like major league sports, you can only spend so much, you know. it’s got a “salary cap.” What does that mean? Well they had to ‘splain it to me three or four times before I understood, so listen carefully, I’m only saying it once.
You got X amount of money to pay X amount of drivers to drive for your team. At the end of the season you get to add up all the points they accumulate for a grand total, and the team with the mostest points wins the pool. Simple ain’t it? Well now I’m trying to get the most guys I can with the dollars I got to be on my team, hoping they will achieve the largest total so I can FINALLY WIN ONE!! A couple of things I think I need to stay away from are Toyota teams and most rookies. But then I don’t want to spend all my bucks on the more expensive guys like Jr., Tony and Jeffy. Spread the money around, get as many as I can so there will be more drivers bringing in points for the team. At least that’s the way that was told to me as the best shot at winning.
Another thing I like about it is that you put your dollar or two in one time, and not every week, and at the end I think it pays the top three teams, rather than each week just the race winner. There are probably a lot of you that have never been in any kind of pool other than a swimming pool, and maybe sometimes it feels like ya been in that guy cess pool, but if you don’t try in once, you don’t know if you got any luck. Or perhaps you have the skill to bring home the bacon, so to speak. Now I am in that NASCAR fantasy pool on Yahoo, and if you see “My Guys” ahead of “Your Guys” in the standings, you know it’s me. I haven’t done too well there over the past few years, but then again what can you win? A flat screen TV? It’s not all about the money or seeing if you’re better than the other guy at picking a driver, it’s the camaraderie in the workplace as far I am concerned (and the bucks would be nice too).
You ask, “Just what does all this have to do with NASCAR?” Well it’s like this: my editor told me at the end of the season last year, as you might remember, “have fun with your column” and that is just what I am doing for this week, because pretty soon I will have to get tough again. The season will start and the watch dog in me will spring to life and be bringing to you all the good, the bad and the ugly that you-know-who will be adding to our sport. You watch, I predict that by the 23rd or 24th race of the season, the field of Chase drivers will change again. To maybe fourteen drivers, and the bonus points for a win will reach 20 or 25. They’ll keep shoving crap down our throats and I’ll keep writing about it and hope one day it will stop and R. J. Reynolds will be able to come back and change it back to “WINSTON CUP RACING.”
After all, just what will we do for the next forty or so weeks this year? Watch basketball? Or perhaps baseball? It is just as I call it, just as I see it, If it ain’t NASCAR it ain’t s**t!!
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