Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Hogwarts, a webmaster, and race cars

Paul Kampe is the on-line coordinator for the Oakland Press, a former cast member of South Park, Summa Cum Laude graduate of Hogwarts, and all-around cyberworld superstar. Well OK. Maybe he just watches the animated series once in a while and J. K. Rowling hasn't returned my phone calls to verify his transcript, but still --  the dude stays on top of things. It should be noted that PK is also lord and high priest of the OP sports blogs. In my position, it's very wise to stay on his good side. Scroll down and check out my pic. When that was originally taken, it looked a lot like Brad Pitt. Then I messed up once and, next thing I knew, BAM, that gruesome mug shot took it's place. Forget Mother Nature. It's not nice to fool with the webmaster. But even Paul has a boss, whose name starts with "k" as well, and I'm not talking about Kosmo. This k thing is getting out of control.....

Hmmm. Seems to me I had something else in mind when I started this......  Oh yeah. Right.

Maybe he wasn't the first or only person to notice, but PK mentioned that the Indy car driven by JR Hildebrand, which crashed on the last turn of the Indy 500, and the car driven by Dale Earnhart Jr. in the NASCAR Coca-Cola race later the same day, which ran out of gas on the last lap, were both sponsored by the National Guard. That raises an interesting question. Ill get back to that.

Besides the National Guard, the US Army has sponsored various race cars on various circuits as well. If you're a race fan, you've probably seen them on TV and never thought twice about it. Sponsoring race teams, especially at the elite levels, is a very expensive undertaking. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to build one of those cars. There's also a "shop" somewhere, complete with a lot of serious machinery. Cha-ching. Throw in the salaries for the driver, the pit crew, the spotters, machinists, engineers, and various other people associated with the operation and we're talking millions just to get started. Hell, the tires are well over $500 apiece and how many of them do they go through? If the car gets wrecked, chalk up another few hundred G's to build another one. Somebody's gotta pay for all this, and I'm fairly certain they can't huddle up, blink, and find themselves in a State Farm office, with a friendly agent ready and willing to cut them a replacement check, nor do they have a piece of the rock, nor has some dopey girl sold them an insurance policy out of a shoebox in a sanitarium. In other words, there ain't no insurance.

Most of those cars have a lot of small decals on them, but those companies aren't coughing up any serious money. More likely, they're giving the race team a few bucks off on parts. The primary sponsor bears the brunt of the costs. In return, they get their name or brand out there and, hence, publicity. Hopefully this will contribute to whatever it is they're selling. This isn't exactly top secret information.

In the case of the National Guard and/or Army sponsored cars, it seems logical to assume those two entities are footing the bill. But wait a minute..... Like all other military branches, they're financed with taxpayer dollars, which brings me back to the question. Who's paying for all this? Unless I'm missing something, it's you, and me, and even that wizard mentioned above.

The $600 hammers and $1000 toilet seats were bad enough, but now we have to finance a bunch of military sponsored race teams that can't seem to win anything? Are there subliminal parallels to be drawn here?

Beats me. I think I'm beginning to understand what Paul sees in South Park. I'm a lot older than he is, but when in doubt, most people return to their comfort zone. I'm going back to my safe haven as well. The next issue of MAD magazine should be hitting my mailbox any day now.

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