If you missed the Pepsi 400 from Daytona last night, you missed quite a race.  After several cautions for the inevitable crashes and post crashes, Jamie McMurray ended a long winless streak by edging Kyle Bush by a front bumper in one of the closest finishes I've ever seen, NASCAR or otherwise. 

The highlight of the race was when teammates Denny Hamlin and Tony Stewart got into each other early in the race.  With Hamlin leading, Stewart nudged his back bumper sending Hamlin across the track and eventually into the #20 car.  While his car was being worked on in the garage, Stewart ripped his teammate on camera saying that Hamlin was young and there was a thing or two he had to learn.  Looks like Coach Gibbs is going to have to take the boys to the woodshed.

Jeff Gordon had another strong showing despite not having a great car.  Gordon, who got the poll because qualifying was washed out, finished fifth, despite being back as far as 13th with 20 laps left.  In fact, Gordon led the race until the 155th lap when he was overtaken by McMurray and Bush.

The story of the night was the unveiling of TNT's new "wide open" coverage, which, after watching it, loosely translated, means "Hey look, we've found a cool new way for you to HAVE to watch the commercials and pimp our sponsors!"

The coverage is centered around the lower quarter of the screen.  The top part is your usual crawl with the race order.  Underneath to the left, a sponsor logo takes up about a quarter of the remaining area.  In the remaining three quarters, there is a big box.  Most of the time the box has the TNT logo in it.  Sometimes, it has useless information in it.  Whenever TNT interviewed a crew chief, they flashed the entire team including the catch can guy and the tire carriers names on the screen.  Now, I know that these people work hard and have families and deserve all the attention that they can get, but there is a reason that they don't credit the "best boy" and the "key grip" in the OPENING credits of a movie. 

The most annoying thing about "wide open" is how under yellow (mostly, but sometime under green) pop up a screen and run a two minute, long form commercial for one of their advertisers.  So there you are, watching the race, wanting to hear what Larry and Wally and Kyle might think will happen when we get back to green flag racing and TNT, with the race on in the background, is rolling the two guys from the Goodyear blimp talking about obscure race facts.  Or Pepsi's trumpeting of Jeff Gordon's career.  Or a very lame Miller Lite spot.  This almost backfired a couple of times, once when Junior left the track (and they couldn't say anything because they were in the middle of a "message from (insert sponsor name)" and another when somebody got up into somebody else and again, no comment because, yup, you guessed it.

And this is in addition to the commercials on local cable which Bil Weber kept pointing out "we're going to a break from your local cable company but we'll we back in less than 90 seconds."  Great, Bill.  I'll try to whiz as fast as I can to get back in my chair on time.  Thanks for the time limit.

Fortunately for me, I have a 65" TV in the living room (I'm sorry, "Great Room") and despite all the clutter on the screen, I could still enjoy the race.  When I went split screen to monitor baseball activity, it was a little harder to watch.  And if you were watching on a standard 21" to 25" TV, good luck to you, it must have been painful.

TV is trying so hard to emulate the computer and video game industry because they think viewers think it looks cool.  Look, give me an uncluttered picture, show me the race order across the top and then give me the occasional useless factoid graphic and I'm happy.  All this other stuff was overkill, clutter and distracted me from enjoying the race.  And just so we're clear TNT, after I caught on to what you were doing, whenever you ran one of those commercials, I  flipped and came back when I knew it was over. 

I'm sure they have some tweaking to do.  Start with the big box and protract it out when you need it (like airplane wheels) not all the time.  You can still super the sponsor logo on the bottom.  And please, just break for a commercial and don't think you are going to hold your audience hostage.  Our fingers are way too fast for that.

Lightning Round

• If this was Mark Buehrle's last Sox start, he sure went out in a blaze of glory.  I guess the Twins were exhausted from Friday.  Meanwhile, the talks are stalled again. Only one man can save the day and he  won't so fuhgetaboutit.
• The Cubs beat the lowly Pirates and continue to chase the sputtering Brewers.
• Words I rarely write: I agree with Chris De Luca.  This home field advantage with the all-star game thing borders on stupid.  Do you think Ian Snell gives a damn who gets the home field advantage?  No, because he'll be on the golf course.  Bud, fix it.
• Here is an interesting theory on how ESPN is helping to kill the NHL.  Before you think I'm nuts, realize that for years, prior to getting the NBA, ESPN fawned over it trying to position themselves to be able to easily acquire it.  In fact, in 1998, they helped David Stern commit anti-trust violations by helping him bury the ABL, which was a league that was in competition with the WNBA.  The NBA was having a lock out so sports news was down, but ESPN made no mention of the league, nor would they pick up any of the league's programming even though the league would have paid them for the privilege..  When the league folded on December 20th, Linda Cohn and Rich Eisen just didn't report it, they made snide comments that almost took a mocking tone and made sure to mention that the now unemployed players could catch on in the WNBA.  ESPN  sucks up to the NCAA by running off brand sports like softball and Lacrosse and yes, even zzzzzzzzzz soccer as part of deals that they have with the NCAA or someone else.  ESPN makes sure that when their network, ABC is running something big, ESPN and ESPN2 are showing something nobody will watch like figure skating, dance or cheerleading to protect the network.  When ABC had Monday night football, you could bet if the game was a blowout or if you just didn't care about it, you could flip over to ESPN and there we would have the US Lawn Jarts championship or something else like that.  ESPN has made certain plays and games into classics just by presenting them on TV and players watch sportscenter to see what the "web gems" are. So, yes, kids, it is totally plausible that ESPN can, by omission or lack of airtime, help make hockey irrelevant.  And while they do show some highlights to service their viewers on the east coast, Gary Bettman's lock out and media blunders have gone a long way to helping making hockey weak and irrelevant.
• Speaking of hockey, Toronto appears to be mucking up.
• Looks like the NFL will have no Maas no mas. Just out of curiosity, how dumb and/or arrogant does a guy with a broadcasting job have to be to put himself in a position like this.  Especially since he's not that good.
  
• Fred Thompson is firing up young Republicans.
• Grab Bubba and Jim Bob and Ethel Mae: It's time for the annual "Redneck Games".
• Loser With Socks' hilarious "What sports star should take over for Bob Barker?"