Dust off the cobwebs, the new season begins NOW

We Americans are faced with a daunting fact: this will be the first weekend without a meaningful football game since the week before Labor Day.

Don't worry any longer, because in addition to a full slate of college hoops, the first major touring race in American motorsports is here this weekend to shake off the wintertime and pre-Valentine's Day blues.

The 47th running of the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona kicks off the Grand-Am season for the Daytona Prototype and Grand Touring classes beginning tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 (notice the later start time), and continuing all the way until the same time on Sunday.

FOX will air the green flag and continue until 4:30, when coverage transfers over to SPEED until 10. They take the night off, as usual, and are on the air bright and early at 7 on Sunday morning until the checkered flag falls.

The NASCAR and IRL connections seem to run deep at the 24 Hours, especially in the DPs, and this year is no different. Amongst the entrants are Danica Patrick, Dario Franchitti, Scott Dixon, Ryan Briscoe, Jimmie Johnson, Casey Mears, A.J. Allmendinger, Juan Pablo Montoya, Colin Braun, and Kyle Petty. And Roger Penske, Chip Ganassi, and Richard Childress all own teams.

Ganassi's DP team will be trying to earn their record fourth consecutive overall victory. Here is the starting lineup for the DP class, seeing that is where all the heavy hitters are:

1. 58 David Donohue/Antonio Garcia/Darren Law/Buddy Rice (Brumos Racing)
2. 16 Timo Bernhard/Ryan Briscoe/Romain Dumas (Penske Racing)
3. 76 Nic Jonsson/Darren Turner/Ricardo Zonta (Krohn Racing)
4. 01 Scott Dixon/Juan Pablo Montoya/Scott Pruett/Memo Rojas (Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates)
5. 10 Max Angelelli/Brian Frisselle/Pedro Lamy/Wayne Taylor (SunTrust Racing)
6. 02 Scott Dixon/Dario Franchitti/Alex Lloyd/Scott Pruett (Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates)
7. 59 Joao Barbosa/Terry Borcheller/JC France/Hurley Haywood (Brumos Racing)
8. 55 Christophe Bouchut/Raphael Matos/Scott Tucker/Ed Zabinski (Level 5 Motorsports)
9. 99 Jon Fogarty/Alex Gurney/Jimmie Johnson/Jimmy Vasser (GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing)
10. 60 Colin Braun/Ryan Hunter-Reay/Oswaldo Negri/Mark Patterson (Michael Shank Racing)
11. 13 Jared Beyer/David Martinez/Jordan Taylor/Ricky Taylor (Beyer Racing)
12. 61 David Empringham/John Farano/Alex Figge/Burt Frisselle/Mark Wilkins (AIM Autosport)
13. 09 Guy Cosmo/Jason Pridmore/Scott Russell/Jeff Ward (Spirit of Daytona Racing)
14. 77 Matteo Bobbi/Memo Gidley/Fabrizio Gollin/Brad Jaeger (Doran Racing)
15. 75 Oliver Gavin/Tracy Krohn/Eric van de Poele (Krohn Racing)
16. 45 Leo Hindery Jr./Bill Lester/Darren Manning/Kyle Petty (Victory Junction-Orbit Racing)
17. 6 A.J. Allmendinger/Ian James/John Pew/Michael Valiante (Michael Shank Racing)
18. 2 Rob Finlay /Casey Mears/Danica Patrick/Andy Wallace (Childress-Howard Motorsports)
19. 22 Ryan Dalziel/Carlos de Quesada/Chapman Ducote/Jean-Francois Dumoulin/Tomas Enge (Alegra Motorsports)
20. 7 Timo Bernhard/Ryan Briscoe (Penske Racing)

PICK: I'm not a big sports car guy, but I do watch occasionally. In an upset, I see A.J. Allemendinger and the Michael Shank team driving through the field and ending the Ganassi domination of this event.

You may be wondering what SPEED will be doing during the nine hours they are off the air tomorrow night and Sunday morning.

The smartass would say "let me guess, the same episode of Pinks, Unique Whips, or Chop, Cut and Rebuild for the 100th time or 172 straight hours of Barrett-Jackson instead of actual racing!"

Well, SPEED will actually fulfill their purpose and air (GASP) REAL racing while they are off the air from Daytona. NASCAR moved the Toyota All-Star Showdown, which features their Camping World East and West stars, to January this year in order to avoid the fact that the event in the past has come before the end of the season (i.e. the regional series have raced at Phoenix in November after this race was run in October).

Preliminaries are tonight at 10 EST on SPEED, with the 250-lap main event tomorrow night once again at 10. Irwindale is a great track, problem is, it's in California. The green flag will not even fly until 11:30 for us back east tomorrow night, although for my fellow SNL fans, staying up until 1 or 2 on a Saturday night is nothing new (and SNL is a repeat tomorrow night, so we have that going for us).

NASCAR decided to open this event up to everyone at some point, so we will see some ringers in this event from the national series, namely Matt Crafton, Ron Hornaday Jr., and Joey Logano. Amongst the young talent, keep an eye on Brian Ickler, Trevor Bayne, Ricky Carmichael (who will run 14 events in the Truck Series for KHI), and Austin Dillon, to name a few. And don't forget about Steve Park, who has returned to the Camping World East Series after failing to secure a ride in Cup, Nationwide, or Camping World Truck competition.