In sports, there are upsets. It's why we watch. If the team or person who is supposed to win always does, there would be no need to watch the game. So you expect the unexpected once in a while.
We've all been there. We saw Villanova beat Georgetown to win the NCAA Tournament in 1985. That one was indeed a shocker. We saw Buster Douglas beat Mike Tyson and said "Who??" We saw the Arizona Diamondbacks in their fourth year in existence beat the Mighty New York Yankees in the World Series. Think about that one for a minute. The Yankees had won the World Series every year the Diamondbacks had fielded a team. And they did it by beating the best closer the game has ever seen in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7.
But this? This is just insane. This is an upset so shocking that if it were a movie script nobody would make the film. They would say it's too much. No way anybody would buy this. A kid making his second start ever in the Cup Series at the biggest event of the year, the Daytona 500, wins for a couple of race car building brothers from the sports earliest days, who hadn't won the Big One in 35 years! Days of Thunder wasn't even that ridiculous.
Let's go back to summer of 2009. The British Open. 59-year-old Tom Watson is standing over a make-able putt on 18 to win it. If he drills that eight footer it is perhaps the greatest story in sports history! Not just golf history, sports history. This guy was so far out of his heyday most people couldn't remember it. He was once one of the game's best but it had been decades, not just years since his last major win.
This is what happened on Sunday. The Wood Brothers had not won the Daytona 500 since 1976. That's right, I said 1976! Gerald Ford was the President of the United States. Bear Bryant was still winning National Championships at Alabama. We were still getting ready to celebrate the Bicentennial. Elvis was still alive.
The Wood Brothers have long since been passed by. The big money, multi-car operations have basically taken over the sport. No longer do single car teams have a chance at competing, much less winning, the big prizes in NASCAR. Those go to Hendricks/Childress/Rousch/Gibbs/Penske/Ganassi type operations. Those teams have the best of everything. They have the the best engine builders, the best mechanics, the best chassis builders, the best crew men, and most importantly the best race car drivers money can buy. Had this race been won with an experienced driver like a Bobby Labonte or a Bill Elliott behind the wheel, it would have ranked right up there with the biggest upsets in sports history.
But Trevor Bayne? Raise your hand if you knew who he was before Sunday?
Joey Logano, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Brad Kezelowski have not won the Daytona 500. And that's OK. Nobody would have expected them to. You know why? Because Mark Martin, Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch, or Jeff Burton has never won it either. Think about that for a minute. Mark Martin was already a veteran driver when this kid was born!
Rusty Wallace never won it. Terry Labonte never won it either. Dale Earnhardt and Darrell Waltrip only won it one time. Jimmie Johnson has only won it once. Had Bayne won this race driving for any of the big time, multi-car teams, this would have been one of the sports' greatest upsets. But to combine both?
I was at the race. I saw him take the white flag. And I still thought there was no way this kid was going to take the checkers. Somebody is going to pass him. We'd seen it all week. There was the last ditch pass in the Bud Shootout by Kurt Busch to take the win away from Ryan Newman. There was Michael Waltrip passing Elliott Sadler at the last possible second to win the Truck Series race on Friday. Tony Stewart did it again on Saturday to win his fourth straight Nationwide Series 300 race. Surely it was about to happen again, right?
It didn't. Trevor Bayne, a kid who just two days earlier was still a teenager, had one the sport's biggest event. One of the biggest events in all of sports, was now his. He's probably not even old enough to realize what this means.
James Folsom - I am a graduate of the University of Central Florida and therefore a huge Knights fan. I am a life long fan of the University of Florida ...
