Fantasy Players, Start Your Engines

We’ll get back to our quest for glory in the NFL Fantasy Playoff Challenge in the next post. In the meantime, since I now know the AFC won’t be needing to play quarterback in the Pro Bowl, it’s time to make an announcement.

The People’s Pigskin started as an experiment in fantasy football by democracy. The goal was to determine whether polls by you, the Internet, could produce a fantasy football team that performed just as well as one that based its decisions on “expert” opinions from people paid to have opinions. The experiment has been a success, so we are expanding it into another venture.

Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the People’s Pitstop, an experiment in fantasy auto racing by democracy.

Why auto racing? First of all, the NASCAR racing season starts in early February, minimizing the down time for this site. Second, and more importantly, NASCAR racing isn’t just for rednecks anymore. What do California, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New York have in common? Each state will host at least one NASCAR Sprint Cup race this year. Fox may play to the redneck crowd by having Darrell Waltrip in the booth, but people have enjoyed watching one person drive faster than the other since Romans were racing chariots.

This experiment, like the last one (which will resume next football season), will rely on you, the Internet, to vote in polls to stock our fantasy racing team from week to week. This time, the venue is Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Auto Racing, and the goal is to win the Friends of From the Marbles league. (The league is named for Yahoo’s racing blog From the Marbles.)

The first race is the Daytona 500 on Feb. 14 (yes, Valentine’s Day), so we’ll get to the mechanics of stocking the team next week. In the meantime, you can learn about NASCAR racing here and read the rules for the fantasy game here.

We’ll be back tomorrow with an update on the Internet’s favorite football team and the polls for Super Bowl week.