Why the Daytona 500 Rules

- A very narrow line exists between being The Coolest Man Alive Under Pressure and that mark on the wall at the Daytona Speedway.

- If you go to Daytona, you'll be 1500 miles away from the dumb French girl who knows nothing of the sport.

- Lots of people in the crowd drove their homes to the race track.

- Watching NASCAR is an outlet for our natural human urge to tailgate someone at 165 MPH.

- If a streaker runs out onto the field at Daytona, he'll get hit by like 17 cars.

- "The Daytona 500" was mentioned in over four hundred Cobb County divorce cases in 2004.

- R.E.M. are from Georgia, and they'd get beaten if they played before the Daytona 500 crowd.

- Your enjoyment of the race isn't disrupted by a lot of people in the crowd talking about abnormal psychology or nuclear physics.

- Races don't have halftime, so no women will be forcibly disrobed while singing.

- You can see what a guy named Jimmie Johnson looks like.

- NASCAR is the only sport besides hockey where the ratio of black guys to white guys is actually in line with the demographics of the audience.

- Those cars are very safe, and deaths are infrequent....meaning you can yell "SWEEEEET !!" when some guy's car explodes into shrapnel, and not feel like a ghoul.

- If an emergency arises that can only be resolved by chewing tobacco or belt buckles, you know that you can probably find these items in the crowd.

- Tiger Woods is worth a billion dollars, but if he wears a white blazer to the Daytona 500, people in the luxury boxes will mistakenly give him drink orders with "boy" mixed in somewhere.

- Try telling a State Trooper that the Daytona 500 is proof that it isn't that dangerous to drive 170 mph.

- If you lost your Johnny Cash tape, you can just walk around the parking lot and get a good five year fix of the legendary Man In Black.

- If Michelle Kwan slips up and crashes into the boards, a huge tire and a car hood aren't flung onto the terrified spectators.

- If  you drive home drunk through the Florida countryside, you can get arrested by one of those Buford T. Justice-style southern sherriffs.

- You can smoke a pack of Winstons a day, and still be in good enough shape to win the Daytona 500.

- I doubt that the Westminster Dog Show has roots in Moonshine Running.

- If you throw  a beer at a NASCAR driver, he spits tobacco back at you.

- If Maria Sharapova doesn't like how Martina Hingis is playing, she can't smash her into a wall at 185 MPH.

- Outside of a college football game, it is the only large gathering with groups of people who are happy to be from Alabama.

- Just about absolutely no hip-hop influence. Most of the drivers think of a "Philly" as a young horse.

- Very few Daytona 500s get snowed out, although it would be fun to watch Jeff Gordon and company working on black ice.

- You can't spit-roast a full pig in the Wimbledon parking lot.

- After the race, you can go to Daytona Beach....after the Stanley Cup, you're in Toronto or something.

- If you hold onto the hotel room for a month, you get first shot at the 2005 crop of Spring Break college booty.

- The track will never be in poor shape because an Ice Capades had been held there the week before.

- If gas stations operated in a Pit Crew manner, I wouldn't complain about paying $1.99 a gallon. We won those wars, for God's sake.

- Very few things burst into flame at Wimbledon.

- The crowd has more "Earls" than a House of Lords meeting.

- There's a driver named Geoffrey Bodine, and no one  thinks to call him "Jethro."

- If you drive to the event in a Volkswagen, you'll be assaulted for it.

- You know at least one of the drivers is flicking a Marlboro out the window at 175 MPH every 15 laps or so.

- In no other sport is the Lap so prominent. It's the driver's center of gravity. A Beer Gut actually provides a slight strategic advantage.

- If Don Henley or Sting tried to do a pre-Daytona concert, they'd be torn to shreds.

- Just like baseball, one of the bigger stars is actually proud to be called "Junior."

- If the beer stand is crowded, you don't have to walk by a sushi bar to get to the next beer stand.

- The guy who passes you on the right while clipping your fender- sending you into a fiery wreck- was actually driving well.

- There's a set of brother racers who still have issues about who had to sleep in the more Northern room of the house where they grew up.

- Has anyone ever made a "pit stop" during a pit stop?

 

Quotes from the Crowd:

- "Gotta love Daytona...There are very few social occasions left for me to rock my new Confederate flag shorts."

- "If the Civil War were fought after NASCAR's inception, cotton t-shirts would be ten for a dollar."

- "Forget about Ron Ar-test. When NASCAR guys go into the crowd, we kill by the dozen."

- "That Wimble Town tennis thang would be much better if they had a Merle Haggard concert beforehand."

- "Baseball cap? Just happen to have one right here."

- "Y'all should chew more tobacco....makes you a god-d*** sexual Tee-ran-o-saurus....just like me."

- "I sure as taxes wouldn't get into a car if I had to wait 500 miles to go to the bathroom."

- "You just watch that hot sauce, boy...'done got a kick to it"

- "You know, darlin'...The smell of burning rubber is considered to be an aphrodisiac in Southeast Asia."

- "That driver had an impressive rookie season....There could be a Miss Teen Missouri in his future."

- "If Dale Senior ran Gulf War I, there wouldn't have been a Gulf War II."

- "South Boston....Alabammy."