NASCAR Results, New Polls and Recommended Reading

First, a fantasy football update: The People’s Pigskin walks into Monday night’s game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Houston Texans with an 82-50 lead over the nuckin’ futs. The Futs have Pierre Garcon and Arian Foster in tonight’s matchup. The Pigskin has Peyton Manning. Not to jinx it, but things are looking good for the Internet’s favorite fantasy football team.

We can’t say the same thing for the People’s Pitstop, which managed to scrape together only 171 points during Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway. Our season total is now 8,677, putting us in 72,036th place overall on Yahoo Sports and dropping us 7 spots, to 90th place, in the Fans of From the Marbles league.

Clint Bowyer, who was awarded the win from the Pitstop’s bench, did contribute 5 points for qualifying in 2nd place. Here’s how our starters did.

Tony Stewart: Started 26th, finished 31st and 30 fantasy points. Ironically, in his last start of the season for us, Stewart was the only People’s Pitstop starter who did not lead a lap in this wild race. Unfortunately, he was caught up in the last-lap crash and led to Bowyer’s win.

Jamie McMurray: Started 12th, finished 36th (5 laps behind the leaders), 4 laps led and 30 fantasy points. McMurray’s chances were essentially extinguished when he got caught up in Jeff Burton’s crash roughly two-thirds of the way into the race.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Started 6th, finished 39th (25 laps behind the leaders), 24 laps led and 34 fantasy points. Earnhardt took the blame for the Burton wreck, which ended the day for the 88 car, as well. And that’s too bad; Earnhardt wound up leading the most laps in this race.

Sam Hornish Jr.: Started 10th, finished 15th, 5 laps led and 72 fantasy points. Raise your hand if you thought Hornish would score twice as many points as any other driver in our lineup. Now put your hand down, you liar.

Here’s the truth: The People’s Pitstop has only three races left, starting with Sunday’s contest at Texas Motor Speedway. The polls are up and will close Thursday morning. Please vote now.

By the way, if you’re a football fan, you owe it to yourself to get your hand on a copy of Ron Jaworski’s book “The Games that Changed the Game.” In this book, Jaworski (with the help of Greg Cosell and David Plaut of NFL films) breaks down seven games that demonstrated a system that altered the way players and coaches across the league viewed the sport. For example, here’s an excerpt from Jaworski’s analysis of Buddy Ryan’s 46 defense:

“Another change the 46 brought about was how teams drafted. More an more personnel directors now pick receivers specifically to beat press coverage. Cornerbacks who cover wider field areas are also popular draft choices. And offenses have had to put in greater numbers of deception plays, such as quick screens where the quarterback gets the ball out fast to a receiver with linemen blocking in front of him.”

There’s plenty more where that came from, so get a copy and enjoy the Monday night game. In the meantime, we have to pick a defense/special teams for next week. A poll on that topic is now open and will close Tuesday evening. Please vote now.

We’ll be back with the full football results.