Daytona 500: Come On Now

The Daytona 500 is the Daytona 500 of NASCAR, okay?

The bigger the event, the greater the hype. Obviously the Daytona 500 is no exception. Last week, the NFL presented its biggest event, the Super Bowl, the sport's championship which New Orleans won over Indianapolis. Baseball has the World Series. The PGA has the Masters. This weekend, the Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver.

This writer has heard it all and hates cross-sports metaphors, like when football announcers call certain players -- "their home run hitters." Even worse are baseball announcers who call three run home runs "field goals."

Once again, here comes the Daytona 500, and the hype which goes back to even before Joe Gibbs had anything to do with the sport, surely Ken Squire used the metaphor, but now it's become entrenched. How dare they call the Daytona 500 "the Super Bowl of NASCAR."

The Daytona 500 is the Daytona 500 of NASCAR. It's closer to being like the Masters, the first grand slam event on the Professional Golf tour. This is a race with 52 years of history. It marks the beginning of the NASCAR Sprint Cup series. The Daytona 500 has a rich history all its own. Comparing it to the Super Bowl truly cheapens both events which both deserve all kinds of reverence but leave it to anxious producers, sports casters who live off of tacky catch phrases, and all the rest of the nonsense to create their own insider's language. At least we can be thankful that ESPN does not pull in Chris Berman to anchor any NASCAR programming.

Let's stick to the action on the track, how it fits in with the history of the race and the sport, and prepare for the long Sprint Cup season ahead rather than try to get a few cheap "wows" with more idiotic cliches.

We'll hold up on picking race contenders until after the Twin 125's. It's all about to get started, the first tangible sign that winter soon will be gone.