Grumpy On a Wednesday

I am feeling a little grumpy today so let's see if typing a few things out helps my attitude or not.

I am glad that I was at a race on Sunday rather than watching the race from Talladega on television! Never mind who a fan likes, or doesn't like, that was absolutely no way to end a race and even though Talladega is always my first choice when I make the decision to attend a NASCAR race, they are going to have to prove to me that they have things figured out there before I would ever consider buying a ticket again. So there NASCAR, I wasn't a "regular" customer by any means but for now I am no longer a customer until you straighten yourselves out.

It will be a darn shame if Kevin Harvick repeats as champion this year given what he did on that final restart. Knowing all of the circumstances and with video both in-car and out, how NASCAR cannot see that his little right turn into Trevor Bayne was not intentional is just beyond me. The NBC announcers did everything they could to dance around the issue, I understand that, they are a "partner" and even the one blog that I follow on NASCAR, Dave Moody's The Godfather's Blog had this entry with the word "Commentary" in the title even though Dave himself does not offer an actual opinion on what happened. Instead he quotes the drivers and officials and their opinions.

I have heard others say "only Harvick knows if he did it on purpose or not" and that makes me grumpy because I think that thousands, if not millions (how many people actually can get NBCSN?) know.

Some non-racing stuff has me grumpy as well.

The Farce Round of the Iowa High School Athletic Association Football Playoffs takes place on this Wednesday night. No, that is not a typo, I meant to say "farce" rather than first because with 32 teams qualifying for the playoffs at least half of the games tonight are nothing more than a money grab by the Association. When the playoffs expanded from 16 teams per class to 32 a few years back the reasoning was that more teams deserved to get in especially in Class A and 1A and 2A where there are more teams, but rather than just doing it in those three classes where it might have made practical sense they also applied it to Class 3A, where now half of the 64 teams would qualify, and in Class 4A where two thirds of the 48 teams would "move on".

So tonight, even in little Class A, we have a 3 and 6 team squaring off against an undefeated team, while in Class 4A we have a one win Davenport North team taking on undefeated Bettendorf. That's a "playoff" game? Seriously?

The saving grace is that someone has made the Athletic Association come back to their senses and this is the last year that 32 teams will qualify for the playoffs asnext year it will go back to 16, so at least I won't have that to be grumpy about in 2016.

Finally, I will always try to stay out of politics here, and I want you to know that I can't ever recall voting a straight ticket so I pick and choose my candidates on their integrity and their ability to lead more so than whether they have an R or a D next to their name. But what really makes me grumpy is when journalists fail to to do their jobs and ask the appropriate questions of the candidates when they make a blanket statement or advance a promise. And as I listened to the news on the radio Monday morning I heard a sound bite from a candidate that just made me shake my head.

So at the risk of not getting a "Like" from my friend Craig Allender, I had to wonder this. When Hillary Clinton says "We have to win this election so that we can start to rebuild the middle class", why doesn't someone ask what she will do differently than what the current administration has been doing for the past eight years do deliver on its campaign promise eight years ago to rebuild the middle class?

And yes, if I stayed home to watch the Republican debate tonight, some of the stuff they promise would make me grumpy as well, especially if somebody doesn't step up and ask the simple question of "Nice idea, how will you go about making that happen?" But instead I will be freezing my butt off watching my nephew in a playoff game that is actually legitimate as Tipton (7-2) plays at Williamsburg (6-3), so that probably won't help my attitude either.

Unless of course the Raiders win!

Thursday Update: So just how much of a farce was the First Round of the Iowa High School Football playoffs? Following is the average margin of victory for the 16 games played with each Class:

4A - 30.1 points
3A - 21.3 points
2A - 26.1 points
1A - 27.1 points
A - 25.1 points
8-Man - 34.9 points

Shame on yourselves Iowa High School Athletic Association, I hope that the extra revenue was worth it!