FanHouse Texas

Although it features one of the least experienced rosters in the nation, Arizona State has refused to rattle. In fact, don't even try to use the inexperience card when discussing the Sun Devils, who entered the College World Series without a senior starter. They dominated the Pacific-10 Conference and have remained perfect in the NCAA Tournament.

Just ask their latest victim, the North Carolina Tar Heels, who just so happen to be making their fourth consecutive CWS appearance and have plenty of postseason stubble.

"I don't know if I buy the inexperience," UNC coach Mike Fox said Sunday after Arizona State beat UNC 5-2 in 10 innings in the pair's opening CWS game at Rosenblatt Stadium. "They've played 60-plus games this year already. They were ready to play. They pitched well and played defense well."

The Sun Devils combined a solid pitching performance from Aussie Josh Spence and a three-run home run from Kole Calhoun in the 10th inning to advance in Tuesday's winner's bracket game against No. 1 national seed Texas.

There was a time when February belonged to college basketball and the intricate puzzle of creating a 65-team bracket from a list of 340-some-odd candidates.

Then we got Rick-rolled by the steroid investigation.

So to get things where they should be here's a steroids tip that doesn't involve digging through someone's garbage:

Investigate the NCAA Tournament bubble.

Texas Motor Speedway's Eddie Gossage has figured out a way to slash the prices on some tickets, remove 21,000 seats and still be in a position to make more money in 2009.

Perhaps we need to put ol' Eddie in charge of this seriously fun economic situation. And by seriously fun, I mean, well something a whole lot different.

Anywho, Gossage announced that -- count 'em -- 21,000 backstretch seats will be eliminated over the next 75 days and replaced with a nice, hopefully level, viewing mound that will accomdate the parking spots of 74 motorcoaches who will pay $15,000 per year for the most luxiorous accomodations a speedway could offer.

Wireless internet, pre-race pit passes, a dedicated concierge/assistant and a plethora of other offerings one would probably expect after dishing out $15k for a few race weekends are included, as well as passes for 10 people to the motorhome area, pit area during pre-race and a access to the track's Speedway Club.

So, if any of you NASCAR highballers out there need a know-it-all blogger to indulge in the fruits of your hospitality, I'll gladly make my way to the Lone Star State to help you out.

For the rest of us, TMS also announced a pretty good deal some of the remaining seats along the backstretch, or what is now dubbed "burnout alley".

Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway gave me that feeling of something I haven't seen in a while.

Most likely, I had that feeling because, well, I hadn't.

Sunday's race, the third win in-a-row for Jimmie Johnson, had a grand total of 55 loop lead changes -- the most NASCAR has had in a race since it started keeping tabs on the data provided by the several different scoring loops around the track.

Yes, NASCAR stars of today swapped position, for the lead, multiple times, with much at stake. Awesome!

I can imagine that those high numbers could be easily chalked up to a couple of quality battles -- side by side nonetheless -- that happened during the Dickie's 500 for the lead. (The best example starts at about 8:41)

First, it was Denny Hamlin vs. Matt Kenseth with less than 100 laps to go. Hamlin drove like he hasn't won a race in awhile to battle Kenseth for the lead for several laps. Swapping the position back and forth, Kenseth finally got the better side of the deal when Hamlin lost control of his No. 11 Chevrolet off of turn two. Hamlin never spun the car, but he impacted the wall hard enough to end any chances at a win (starts about 7:57).

Kenseth luckily avoided Hamlin's mess to find himself dueled in another battle in the closing stages on the event.

For the guys who apply the name decals to the Haas CNC No. 66 Chevrolets and the No. 36 Bill Davis Racing Toyota, Monday brought plenty of new work.

Jeremy Mayfield will replace Jeff Green in the No. 66 immediately after departing Bill Davis' ride. He'll be there in 2008 as well.

For the guys who apply the name decals to the Haas CNC No. 66 Chevrolets and the No. 36 Bill Davis Racing Toyota, Monday brought plenty of new work.

Jeremy Mayfield will replace Jeff Green in the No. 66 immediately after departing Bill Davis' ride. With the No. 36 BDR ride available (and lacking a sponsor in '08), Davis hired a pair of Craftsman Truck Series drivers with past Cup experience to finish out the year.

Johnny Benson and Mike Skinner will split those duties. Skinner gets the gig at Atlanta this weekend and then at Texas Motor Speedway while Benson will wrap up the year at Phoenix and Homestead.

With Scott Riggs already announced as a Haas CNC driver for 2007, the driver lineup will completely change at Haas with both Jeff Green and Johnny Sauter on the way out it seems.

He's got 601 home runs, but think of how many Sammy Sosa might have whacked if he played regularly in the bandbox that is Fenway Park. It's a scenario that almost played out, as Sammy came thisclose to being a member of the Boston Red Sox, not once but twice.

With Sammy in Boston this weekend for the Sox-Rangers mash-up, Jeff Goldberg of the Hartford-Courant reminds us that The Sos was actually signed to a free-agent deal by the Sox in early 1995 while baseball was still officially "on strike." But the deal, orchestrated by then-Sox GM Dan Duquette, was kiboshed when MLB struck a new labor deal to end the strike.

His name surfaced again in trade talks in 2000, with rumors flying that the Sox were attempting to swap Trot Nixon for Sammy, but nothing materialized.

Sammy himself said he would've been totally down with playing in Boston.

"This is a great place to play," Sosa said, seated in the visitors dugout at Fenway Park. "I remember one time I almost signed here. I would have had even better numbers."

Considering that Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy once famously referred to Sosa as "Sammy Soosa," that's pretty nice to hear.

The past three races have all had the same ending for Jeff Gordon. The setup for the finale, however, has proven to be yet another chapter in what appears to be an storied history of the 24 team.

At Bristol, Gordon ran second with two laps to go after a caution. He had fresher tires than Kyle Busch and should have battled to the wire with the Shrub. Instead, Gordon was blocked by Busch and Jeff Burton snuck by on outside to relagate Gordon to third. For the Gordon nation, a top 5 after such a terrible car for much of the day was more than acceptable.

Two weeks ago at Martinsville, Gordon caught Jimmie Johnson with about 25 laps to go, and should have made the move. Instead, he waited, then a caution flew, allowing Johnson's tires to cool and handling to improve. Still, Gordon caught back up to the 48 with 10 laps to go, played some demolition derby, and again couldn't seal the deal.

Yesterday at Texas? More of the same.

The outsiders wonder why NASCAR fans are so loyal to its sponsors? Because they're good to us.

Matt Kenseth raced for free fries today.

He won.

Not just for himself, but for anyone in America able to get their grubby hands on a copy of the race results and drive themselves to or through an Arby's. Those that can will get a free medium-size order of curly fries on Matt's Monday @ Arby's (April 16).

Thanks, Matt!

The Fanhouse receives some interesting tips now and then and on Easter morning something came in attempting to inspire a post about strip clubs. Nothing NASCAR-related and post-worthy immediately came to mind or seemed appropriate on such a holy day.

A few Peeps later, there's news of a former stripper with NASCAR connections being captured by U.S. Marshals. Now that's enough to inspire a post on a slow NASCAR news weekend.

Who needs feature film entertainment like "The Fugitive" and "U.S. Marshals" when you can just tune in to NASCAR headlines?

Iranian-born Fatemah Karimkhani was taken into custody Sunday after after eluding authorities for three years.

Name isn't familiar? NASCAR fans might remember her alias, Angela Harkness, the "femme fatale who hoodwinked stock-car racing, then skipped town, leaving behind a dead husband and an embezzling lover."

Today is March 7th. It is approximately 11 months out from Signing Day 2007, and most recruiting articles around the country go something like "I have six offers and have no idea where I want to go to school because it's March." Unless, of course, you are a fan of Texas or Texas A&M. Fifteen recruits -- all Texans -- have already announced for the Longhorns, which is four fewer than A&M's whopping 19 kids, also all Texans. Hell, even Big 12 school of last resort Baylor has commitments from a couple confused high schoolers.

It's hard to argue with UT's on-field success over the past few years, but this seems kind of detrimental to the schools accepting all these early commits. In reality, a "commit" binds a school, which must deal with potentially negative PR fallout if they withdraw their offer, but not a player. With the recent onslaught of players who consider a commitment to mean "I'm committed for now, I guess," schools can find themselves in awkward positions. Witness Texas last year: they delivered a take-it-or-leave it ultimatum to Ryan Mallett because Florida QB John Brantley wanted to commit. Mallett turned them down and committed to Michigan shortly thereafter, and UT was left in the lurch when Brantley defected to Florida later in the year. I suppose there's not much UT can do in that situation.

I suppose the weirder thing is that kids in Texas are so eager to get recruiting out of the way. Big time schools all have dozens of offers out and could find themselves with bulging March commit lists if the recruits were so inclined. But they're not, unless they're from Texas. Even guys who are heading out of state like JB Shugarts or Sam McGuffie want to get stuff done by the end of the summer. LSU-bound Terrance Toliver was one of very few 2007 recruits who took the recruiting process all the way down to signing day. Do gremlins run around Texas football fields looking to tear the ACLs of uncommitted seniors? And how can we turn them into an anti-terrorism weapon?

Questions abound.