How personally satisfying it must be to hit racecars, race stewards, or the random woman in the grandstands in front of you with full cans of beer. You don't listen to Dale Earnhardt Jr. urging you to stop. You don't listen to your fellow fans telling you to stop. You certainly don't listen to law enforcement or track officials. Your parents must be so proud.

If a moron will throw a tall boy onto the track at the conclusion of a race, is it that absurd to imagine him throwing one during a race? Is it only a matter of time before that happens? Probably.

Let's do the math. Knowing that force = mass x acceleration, a 16 oz. can of beer striking an ideal blow to a car going 200 miles per hour hits with the force of about 2,000 lbs.

"Yeah, that'll teach that pretty boy."

I don't want to speculate on the injury that would cause a driver, but I will speculate on what that would do to the race at Talladega. At worst, it would expose NASCAR and ISC to crippling lawsuits and the track would close. It would scare away the Nextels, the DuPonts, the Budweisers and the Fox Broadcasting Companies of the world. NASCAR racing as we know it would end.

At best, it would mean increased ticket prices to offset higher event insurance and security costs. Plus, it would mean the end of bringing your own beer to the track. That alone would cause anarchy.

Either way, a huge portion of the fan base would walk away from the sport out of sheer embarrassment.

Do you for a minute think that NASCAR's lawyers haven't already thought this through?

To those who were part of the ass-hattery at Talladega, or sympathize with them, I ask this simple question: If the honchos at NASCAR can put a guy like Tony Stewart so firmly in his place, what makes you think that their plan for all NASCAR fans would be any less fierce?

To the rest of us, I ask: Are we as fans strong enough to prevent the crazies among us from ruining the greatest ongoing sporting experience we've ever known?

NASCAR and its fans are at something of a crossroads these days. One thing's for sure, things cannot stay the way they currently are.

NASCAR.com

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