The Best Beauty Car Experience
The Best Beauty Car Experience: ORANGE CRUSH As Teams 5 and 6 respectively, Stranglehold and Orange Crush line up next to one another in the beauty contest. This is always interesting to me because the two teams generally seem to have the biggest fan bases and they come out to the beauty contest with as...
The Surprise Win of the Year Award
The Surprise Win of the Year Award (Two Way Tie): STRANGLEHOLD’S BILL MCMAHEN and FULL THROTTLE 1) STRANGLEHOLD’S BILL MCMAHEN Bill Mcmahen was the driver who grabbed the checkered flag in the upset of the year, when Stranglehold beat Orange Crush. The fact that Stranglehold won was a surprise, yes, but the reason Mcmahen earns...
The Most Outstanding Driver Award
The topic of an MVP or a Most Outstanding Driver for the year has come up in conversation a number of time with different people involved with the league. And with it always comes a debate. The situation tends to unfold in a similar manner. Someone will ask me who I think the MVP is. ...
The Upset of the Year
The Upset of the Year: STRANGLEHOLD defeats ORANGE CRUSH (Third Night) This is purely a numbers award. Stranglehold was in last place the night they faced Orange Crush and Orange Crush was in second place at the time. The two teams met, Stranglehold won and it was the upset of the year.
The Mel Noble Jr. Award
The Mel Noble Jr. Award: STRANGLEHOLD’S MEL NOBLE JR. Most people wait a year or two before changing the name of an award—in this case The Crazy of the Year—to something honoring an athlete’s contributions to said award. In this case, I’m not waiting a second to officially change The Crazy of the Year Award...
The Worst Race of the Year
The Worst Race of the Year: STRANGLEHOLD vs. DAMAGE, INC (Fifth Night) While I could have gone in several different directions with the Best Race of the Season award, there is only one true contender for the Worst Race of the Season; Stranglehold vs. Damage, Inc Fifth Night. It was a race that was so...
The Tpyo Award
The Tpyo Award: Stranglehold’s Bill McMahon, er, Bill McMahen, uh, I mean Bill McMahan, no, um, Bill Mcmahen. Whatever. There’s an old joke that I still find amusing. What word is always spelled wrong? ‘Wrong’. Well, in the TDA, there’s a similar situation that isn’t exactly a joke. What driver’s name is always spelled wrong?...
Inside the Statistics (October 11, 2011)
I like statistics. I love reading how Vegas computes its NFL lines, enjoy pouring over the weekend box office totals each Monday morning and, while I hate watching baseball, am fascinated by the myriad stats that are now available to fans. In the latter case, it’s not simply OPS and WHIP, but FIP, WAR and...
TrackSide #16 (October 4, 2011)
Minor Point #1: Transparency Made Its Way to the TDA It brings me great pleasure to be able to write that the TDA handled the scheduling of Fifth Night’s races with as much transparency, class and grace as could have been imagined. In hindsight, there wasn’t one element of the process that I would have...
TrackSide #13 (August 23, 2011)
Race of the Night: Mean Green Machine vs. Full Throttle There were several important races on the evening. The two most important were in the second round when Reckoning had a chance to clinch the season title against Orange Crush, and in the finals when Mean Green Machine battled tooth-and-nail against Orange Crush to secure...
TrackSide #12 (August 9, 2011)
The TDA races returned to form in the Third Night, with an exciting evening of hard hitting match-ups, SpeedChannel on site and the upset of the year taking place in the second round (when Stranglehold defeated Orange Crush). However, the grand majority of these elements were lost in the wake of Johnny Ryan’s driver’s door...
TrackSide #11 (August 2, 2011)
Minor Point #1: Stranglehold had a really tough night of racing You want to talk about having your work cut out for you… Stranglehold started out the evening of Third Night in last place (along with Damage, Inc). In the bracket that was pulled, Stranglehold ended up facing the third place team in the first...