Redneck Games: NASCAR

When I was a kid there was never a ball game on in our house.  Instead, it was NASCAR.  It wasn't till I started dating my husband that baseball and football was a front running topic among the guys and because of their interest in the sports they had leagues of fantasy sports.  In an effort to form a more common ground with my dad, my husband formed a fantasy NASCAR league among my family circle.  It started small for the first few seasons, a hand full of guys that watched the races.  Eventually it grew year after year, adding cousins, friends and friends of friends, complete with web/chat site, a prized trophy that gets passed to the winning team each year, and an annual dedicated draft day that's decorated with a whole lot of trash talk and colorful language.

The season starts with the Daytona 500 and this year the draft was held at our house.  Very early in the morning around 4:00-5:00am my husband was up to start the cooking.  He decided to make smoked pulled pork sandwiches which turned out amazing and I'm not just saying that because it's one of my favorites.

At 9:00am everyone starts showing up and every guy has at least one of the following three items in their hand... their draft picks, beer, food.  I offered coffee and they looked at me like I had two heads.

The race starts at 10:00 so they don't waste any time getting started on the draft.

How many rednecks does it take to....


From the circle they're calling out who's up next and cursing each other over who took which driver.  It goes something like
"Carl Edwards"
"Taken"
"Son of a..."

Once they wrap things up it's race time.  Every time there is a crash someone says "who's driver is that?"  "your guy took my guy out, expletive, expletive, expletive."

Throughout the day spouses and kids filter in.  During the race you won't likely find an open seat in front of the TV, there are others in the garage (man cave) watching the race out there, others gathered around the food set up, kids playing video games in the other room, and a lot of laughing and just having a good time.

I believe the head count came up to around 35 people this year and you can bet your hiney we used paper plates and plastic forks. Eesh.

As soon as the race and interviews with the drivers ends the crowd started to thin and as the guys leave they say stuff like "see ya later, good luck this year" and in their head they're saying "I hope your driver doesn't qualify, or gets pushed into a wall and gets knocked out of the race and loses their sponsor."

Ah yes indeed, it's race time.