NCAA Football Nashville

Seven-year NASCAR Busch owner Armando Fitz loves going home to Nashville:

"I love coming to Nashville. There's not another race track I'd rather win at. My sister lives here, I've got family here, It's fun."

The former Vanderbilt linebacker always enjoyed the thrill of competition and now lives it every day in the "ultra-competitive world of motorsports." He draws parallels between competition on the gridiron and the racetrack:

"It's teamwork. Like a pit crew, there's seven guys that go over the wall. They've got to operate like an offense or defense in football. The jack man is like the quarterback."

Fitz, who owns Fitz Motorsports with his wife Mimi Sabates, sits just outside the Top 15 in owner points and heads to Music City with 2002 NCTS Champion and Cup driver Mike Bliss behind the wheel of the #22 Dodge and one immediate goal:

"We want to take home one of the [Gibson] guitars for our trophy case as well and know we have an excellent shot of doing just that."

His ultimate goal: The big leagues--a Nextel Cup team by 2009.

The Fanhouse thinks he's on the right track.

We're two years out from the next Presidential election, but already one of the lead candidates is hitting the red state sports scene hard for votes: Rudy Giuliani. See the screen capture below - a Guiliani for President ad placed prominently on the Rivals.com college football website.



Nice.

This is smart and annoying at the same time. Guiliani must first defeat several other big time Republicans in the various primaries if he is to have a shot at being President.. Seeing as how he hails from deep blue New York, a concerted effort must be made to bridge the gap between himself and the red, southern-ish party base. Enter the Rivals.com ad.

Like I said, smart. Hey, look at me, I'm Rudy and I like football! So long as he doesn't pretend he's part of the Kennedy clan playing football with the family and get photographed having the football attack him (don't fight the ball!) like uh, one John Kerry, this will work out well.

Yet ... it's also annoying. The campaigns just keep getting earlier and earlier and now the pandering extends not only to mailers, phone calls, television ads and radio ads, but also our favorite internet sports sites that are supposed to be our diversions from the politicians. Oy.