Is this NASCAR or the WWE?

It seems like this is becoming "sports entertainment"...or is it?

I mean, we just had to have "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, (who isn't even IN the WWE anymore, is he?) give the command to start engines.

You have phantom debris...enough said.

Name calling and hostility on camera like with wrestling.

I guess I'm just being cynical. Around the end of the race, it seems like it was getting pretty spicy, with Montoya racing Stewart hard and spinning him out, getting into Johnson in the process.

It seems like everyone is content to ride around for three quarters of the race, then they have to kick it into HIGH gear, by making a show of drag racing everyone to get positions and sometimes making stupid mistakes.

I can't help but wonder if in the future, the people in the production trailer are giving cues to the crew chiefs, to get the driver to do something brave and/or stupid. Outrageous and conspiritorial...? I guess so. But you can't help but think anything but "this is just racing" sometimes.

Just as I'm writing this, Tony Stewart spins out and gets into Kyle Busch, who get into Earnhardt's back deck lid. Sheet metal and everything out of whack, a few pit stops need to get it all together, with 100 mile an hour tape. I don't know if that would do any good.

All this excitement is a surprise, since I was lulled into a comfortable snooze...I'm not sure what I saw after many points of view on TV and listening to the scanner.

And this was with 77 to go! (I think the script was written that way...or was it? Sorry, can't resist.)

Well, we'll see what the results are...