How Does Driving Over the Speed Limit Qualify As a Sport?

If you take a trip to Indiana, one of the major sights to see is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Brickyard 400. The Brickyard 400 is one of many sporting events surrounding the hype of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, better known as NASCAR.

NASCAR has grown over the years into one of the most popular sports in America. Many find excitement in the statistics, saying that the stock cars can go up to 160 mph.

A friend of mine once told me that he finds excitement in watching the crashes, which he described as "awesome."

But if watching a car crash while going extremely fast is considered "awesome" nowadays, American sports fans have really lost their minds.

I've been a sports fan as long as I've been alive, and in 16 years of watching sports, I can't put my finger on why people love NASCAR so much. In most sports, I can find the attraction pretty easily.

For instance, I'm not a fan of mixed martial arts, but it can be very exciting and intense. I always love a good fight, but I don't feel they need to make a sport in which one opponent can kill another. Another sport like that is wrestling. Both of these sports are downright pointless, but I don't have a hard time seeing why people enjoy watching them.

I decided to give NASCAR a try after seeing the Will Ferrell movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. The movie was a comedy, and made fun of NASCAR in every way possible.

However, it also displayed an exciting side to NASCAR that I hadn't seen before, and it made me think that maybe the sport wasn't as boring as I'd thought it to be.

I went to a bar a few days later and watched a NASCAR race. Actually, I didn't watch it. I looked at it and then decided to ask the bartender to change the channel to the ballgame.

Needless to say, I was much more entertained watching something I could actually cheer about.