Fantasy racing offers path to an enduring love of the sport

By Kurt Allen Smith, Frontstretch.com, Special to SI.com

For most of his years in NASCAR, multiple Cup winner Jeff Gordon has been a key contributor to fantasy racing success. Harry How/Getty Images

The idea that NASCAR is a redneck sport still pervades much of the national consciousness, despite the fact that only a handful of NASCAR drivers today come from a part of the world where people take pride in their grits. You may wonder why there is such fanatical dedication on the part of some to a so-called "sport" where men drive 500 miles in a circle. "Look, they're making ANOTHER left turn!" You may think NASCAR drivers are not really athletes, since it does appear that the car does most of the work. Maybe "boogity boogity boogity" alone is enough to turn you off for good.

Well, permit me to tell you my story, because I once felt the same way.

I was a baseball guy, who lived and died with his Baltimore Orioles. My older brother, Doug, was the NASCAR nut in the family ... and the two of us would often have e-debates over which sport was better. They read something like this: "What costs more to attend, a baseball game or a NASCAR race?" "At least NASCAR drivers don't spit on the officials, and none of the races end in a tie like the All-Star game." "The All-Star Game may have been a tie, but everyone went home alive, unlike the Daytona 500." No holds barred.

Despite this, Doug had cornered me at a family gathering one day and persuaded me to join a fantasy racing league he had started. His league was named the Fairgrounds Racing League, after the now-defunct dirt racing league at the Reading, Pa. Fairgrounds, where Kenny Brightbill earned immortality. Back then it was simple ... you picked one driver and an alternate. I picked Rusty Wallace and Ricky Craven. I didn't win, but Rusty performed adequately enough to keep me from becoming a laughingstock.

The next year, 1999, the league became more involved. We drafted six drivers and chose four each week to activate. A player scored the points of the active drivers. I knew little about NASCAR, but I knew Jeff Gordon was pretty damn good, so I outspent everyone to get Gordon on my team.

I stayed in the league, not so much because I was becoming a fan, but because I enjoyed the get-togethers with family for chili and beer on draft day. A crowd would gather at someone's home on a sunny and cold January day, to talk about who was going to be good that year (without trying to tip one's hand of course) and why most of us hated Dale Earnhardt and restrictor plates, before sitting down to settle who was going to be on whose team. A good time was had by all.

Before I became a fanatic about who to draft and activate, I was the butt of many jokes in the league, mostly from my father, who doesn't spare anyone's feelings when a good putdown is there to be had. Some of his classics were "I can't believe Kurt fell for that Jerry Nadeau's really going to be good now trick", "Kurt activates ol' D.W. in the face of all logic", "Looks like Mayfield outperforms Gordon once again".

He would learn to never fire up the youngest son.

By 2003 I was beginning to pay attention, and in the draft that year I believed I had a team that could challenge for a title. Jeff Gordon. Tony Stewart. Rusty Wallace. Bill Elliott. And Michael Waltrip for plate races.

I lost to my father by 72 points in a total of about 13,000. With Stewart and Gordon catching fire toward the end of the season, I was really putting the heat on, especially with my late-season acquisition of Jamie McMurray. But like Matt Kenseth that year, he was so far ahead that I ran out of races.

So in '04 I became fanatical.I followed practice speeds and qualifying speeds. I averaged out finishes over the last five years, throwing out poor finishes that I suspected were DNFs (a method I was forced to ditch when I discovered it made Derrike Cope look good). Every week I put together a spreadsheet to determine who I thought would run well that week. Yes, I needed a life.

In just a few years NASCAR had zoomed past baseball as the sport I watched the most. It may have been partly the lack of payoff involved with being an Orioles fan after the departure of Pat Gillick and Davey Johnson, or the fact that I wasn't used to having a stake in every event, not just the ones featuring my team.

Fantasy racing is a different from other fantasy sports. Auto racing, NASCAR especially, is much more conducive to fantasy games and leagues. To be a fantasy owner in baseball or football, you need to know the players rather than the teams, which requires an almost fanatical level of dedication, especially against the hardcore cutthroats that usually participate in such pastimes. Not so with NASCAR ... just three or four Sundays of watching will make one reasonably familiar with all of the participants week in and week out. No cable package or subscription plan needed. It's much easier learning the abilities of 40 or so drivers, especially when they are on TV most every week.

Through doing all this I began to realize I was looking forward every week to being parked in front of the TV every Sunday afternoon, munching on chips and salsa, drinking a beer, and pulling for my three or four guys to finish in the top 10. The dropping of the green flag became an adrenaline boost that would put me in a zone for four hours.

It wasn't guys going around in circles anymore. It was teams breaking their backs to go around that circle one-tenth of a second faster. They weren't rednecks anymore ... they were guys from all over the country who wanted to race against the best stock car drivers in the world. The cars were beautifully, colorfully, painted with the colors and logos of great American institutions. The drivers all had their own personalities, offering something for everyone ... but most of them still carried themselves with dignity and class. The rivalries inspired passion and emotion, even if most of them were more in the imagination of fans than anywhere else. The different venues made for different types of racing: wide open and full throttle in Atlanta, nerve-wracking closeness at Talladega, pushing and shoving at Martinsville, simple survival at Darlington. 500 miles went from being too long to too short.

It took me a few years, but I realized one day that this was great stuff.

My father and brother are no longer members of the Fairgrounds Racing League. Both claim to have zero interest in NASCAR anymore, a perfectly timed excuse in light of that being the sentiment of quite a few fans these days. But I suspect the real reason was that the youngest son, the little brother, the baseball lover who didn't know anything about NASCAR, the once perpetual victim in the racing league, was now a tough competitor and no longer easy pickings for their wallet. In short, I was now handing them whoopins on a regular basis. (Hell, it's not my fault that Doug was endlessly loyal to Dale Jarrett.) When I finally won the big prize in '06, they bailed.

OK, I'm kidding a little bit. I believe their stated reasons. I haven't caught either of them watching a race behind my back yet.

But the FRL lives on, and Kurt's still watching (and attending, when he can persuade his web employers to pick up the tab) every week. Draft day is still one of the most anticipated days of the year, and beating everyone else is still fun.

And thankfully, mercifully, I was able to drop my membership in the Baltimore Orioles Fanatics Club before their ongoing reign of futility. After a ridiculous figure took over as the team's owner and Cal Ripken retired, removing all that remained distinctive about a team that once could inspire my unmatched devotion, I was grateful to have a new sport to follow.

So if you're curious about why people are so dedicated to cars going around in circles, try joining in a fantasy league. My home at the Frontstretch offers several good ones, some for neophytes and some for experts.

Once you're competing and rooting for a driver or drivers to outperform the others, you'll see that there is a hell of a lot more to it.

And like me, you may see why people become addicted.

Looking for a place to flex your fantasy muscle this season and earn great prizes, too? Then look no further than Frontstretch.com. With a variety of free and pay games for every skill and participation level, there's truly something for everyone. Signups start on Feb. 1, so click here to keep from missing out on another season of great fantasy racing action!