1) Wow, I’d forgotten what it was like to write articles on the Team Demo Association (TDA)! From 2011-2015, I wrote regular columns on the TDA, sometimes on their website, most recently for Behind the Destruction (dot com). In 2016, I didn’t.
During my sabbatical, I’d forgotten about the threats of violence and crazy suggestions for what I should put up my ass that my articles engendered. If you told me last year that a post of mine on Facebook would spark a back and forth trash-talking session between the members of Orange and Green, I’m not sure I’d have believed you. Either way, it’s good to be back!
2) The reason I didn’t write about the TDA in 2016 was not a principled stand on my part nor the action of a man who had many better things to do, it was simply the easiest choice. Here’s the truth: I love writing about the TDA and the races. I want to write about the TDA… but in 2016, I didn’t know how to. So many of the teams were new and really bad. On any given night, it seemed like only one of three teams would win; Mean Green Machine, Orange Crush or Full Throttle.
In 2017, that sentiment was amplified. Five of the league’s eight teams were either shepherded by the league itself or brand spanking new. I’m not saying it’s mathematically possible, but it seemed to a lot of people that the TDA could have five 0-5 teams this year.
Full Throttle’s roster took a beating in the last two off-seasons. With Ron Johnston retiring after 2016, and Jay VanAllen having gone to Mean Green and Levi Turnbaugh heading to Orange Crush after 2015, Full Throttle was down a number of drivers when they were going to need all the help they could get.
Orange and Green were not only going to duke it out for the title, it seemed reasonable to expect that the only losses that Orange or Green would have would come at the hands of each other.
With this in mind, what the hell was there to write about? The rosters were in flux, several teams changed names & numbers and the prevailing feeling around the league was that the new tire rule was going to doom everyone. My league preview article would have been four words long. “Orange good. Green better.”
I would have spent more time detailing the fact that, in the off-season, the league owned team, The Bandits, had an apostrophe in their name and logo (The Bandit’s) than talking about the on-track racing.*
* Here’s how crazy things are with the name swapping and The Bandits: if you go to the TDA website and click on The Bandits name, A) It is still spelled with an apostrophe, and B) the URL of The Bandit’s page is: http://www.teamdemo.com/teams/chicago-hitmen/
I went to First Night though and had a blast. Even though the majority of the racing sucked—save for the finals race—it was fun. I’d never seen a driver take off from the starting line before the green flag before. (I enjoyed it again when I saw the same thing Second Night!)
Halfway through Second Night’s races something clicked for me. Rather than writing about the races—which all left people wanting more—I could write about the stories of the evening. Sure, the majority of these stories happened immediately prior to or just after the races themselves, but they were more entertaining than the races themselves.
3) One thing I absolutely love about the demolition derby is the courageous/brave/downright stupid things that the drivers will do in the heat of the moment. Drivers have raced without seat belts and without helmets and drivers have raced with broken bones and ribs, with one driver literally cutting off a cast at the track so he could race. Matt “Opie” Pierce died because of a hit and came back and raced again. It’s insane!
Second Night, Levi Turnbaugh did one of the most insane/stupid things I’ve seen: he started a fight with someone (Zac VanAllen) wearing protective gear and a helmet. I mentioned this in my write up of the stories of the evening. If Turnbaugh had attempted to tackle Iron Man, I’d have written about that too.
Understandably, VanAllen was not as enthused or entertained about the whole matter as I was. In response to the situation, he asked me a very good question: Since the beginning of the 2014 season, Mean Green Machine has won roughly two out of every three nights of racing and two championships to boot; why wasn’t I writing about that?
And, after much reflection, the truth is that I’m not writing about that because Mean Green Machine (and, to a lesser degree, Orange Crush) is so far ahead of the crowd, it’s almost not news anymore. It’d be as if Mike Trout and Aaron Judge went head-to-head in a home run competition with eighth graders.
Here’s how far ahead of the crowd Green and Orange are this year: they have both won more races (5) than the rest of the league combined (4).
Here’s how far ahead of the crowd Green was last year: they averaged—AVERAGED!!!—a first place finish.
Here’s how far ahead of the crowd Green is before Third Night: rumors are swirling that the team is going to boycott the race because of the way the extracurricular activity that took place after the final race was handled… and it might not impact their title odds.
And here’s where the league is at present: according to the official point standings, four of the league’s eight teams haven’t even been assigned team numbers. There’s Team 1, Team 3, Team 4, Team 6… and then everyone else. Since the teams without team numbers are also the bottom four teams in the standings, it does present an interesting picture.
4) I’ve noted this year that the overall talent level of the drivers in the stands is significantly better than the drivers on the track. It was weird watching Ryan Bleuer, Tom “Brickman” Lewis and Garrett “Big Kahuna” Vanderbilt chit-chatting at various times the evening and thinking that if the three of them hopped into cars that they’d have substantially better odds of winning the night than 5 or 6 of the teams that were actually racing.
The best part of watching Bleuer and Lewis talking though was that one of the times they were doing so during Orange Crush’s race against War Machine.* You may remember that race as the one where War Machine’s lead lap runner cut the Turn 3 tire multiple times.
* It’s definitely not what was intended, but every time someone mentions War Machine, I instantly think of the fight scene in Point Break where Patrick Swayze says, “Back off, War Child. Seriously.”
So, naturally, I’m wildly entertained when some driver on War Machine backs off of anything. As an aside, Swayze’s voice sounds really odd in that clip, doesn’t it?
Flashback to 2010. Orange Crush was racing Reckoning in the finals. During the course of the race, the Turn 1 tire had gotten pushed out ridiculously far. Orange Crush’s Johnny Ryan was the last Orange car running and he began collecting laps for them. Except he cut the tire twice. It ultimately ended up not mattering—even if he’d gone around the tire, Reckoning’s Brian Anderson had enough laps to win—but it was an interesting story nonetheless.
Seven years later, Bleuer and Lewis were watching War Machine’s lead lap runner cut underneath the tire time and again, a fascinating sense of déjà vu creeping over those people who knew the significance of this move.
With this in mind, it was a tad unusual to see Orange Crush’s Ron Tyrakowski cut the tire once as well… he was on the track the last time when Orange faced Reckoning!
That said, I heard one theory from a former driver that I liked so much I had to include it here: “Maybe,” said the driver, “Maybe Ron thought, ‘I’m going to cut the tire once and see if these new drivers on War Machine notice what I’m doing and think that’s okay.’ And then they’ll start cutting the tire.” I’m hoping this is the correct answer.
5) When I first became associated with the TDA, it was explained to me that there were only two rules in demos. Rule #1 – Don’t hit someone in the driver’s door. Rule #2 – go around the tires. “And people hit each other in the driver’s door all the time,” I was informed.
I can’t say I’m an expert to any degree, but two bits of information that I have picked up over the years that I will pass along to all newer drivers are this: Unless you have a really good reason not to, leave your car on the track after the race and let the end-loaders return it to your pits. Doing so saves the engine wear and tear amongst many other benefits.
An addendum to this tip: if you’ve been sitting dead on the track for the last portion of the race, absolutely, positively do not fire up your car after the race ends and then drive it off.
And, lastly, go around the tires.
If the tire gets pushed out to the wall, drive off the track, go into the parking lot, circle around the outside of the tire and then get back on the track.
So for Third Night, I hope there is a lot of good racing; I hope that the rumors that Green is going to boycott the race are just that; and I hope that I can focus more on the on-track racing than the stories surrounding it. My fingers are crossed.