Yes, it's mostly Auto Racing, but there is a reason for the NFL tag on this post. Read down NFLers, I want your opinion.

In this cynical "Buy one Get one Free", media savvy world each of us probably sees dozens of gimics attached to products and services everyday, probably so many we don't even notice them more.

But I think I've found the worst sporting gimic yet - I give you "cross-over sport".

In 9 days time a brand new auto racing series kicks off in Europe - the Superleague Formula. There is nothing on the outside that makes it look any different from every other auto racing series in the world. It's six races - from August to November - across six European nations. The drivers won't be new, part of a diversity drive or anything else. They will be proper drivers, including those with experience in series such as F1, IRL and Champ Car. They will be run by proper teams, the AS Roma team run by current F1 driver Giancarlo Fisichella's race team (they already run a team in F1's feeder series).

Now, did you spot the gimic in all that? "AS Roma, isn't that an Italian soccer club?" I'd like to imagine you asking. Why, yes it is. The teams are all soccer clubs. Top teams from Europe - Roma, AC Milan, Liverpool - The Middle East, China and Brazil have brought up the rights to run teams.

Racing and soccer: Glorious Marraige or Terrible Mismatch? (Superleague.com)

Why? To be honest I don't know. The only thing that makes this different from any other series is the soccer team gimic. The cars are all identical - so are those in F1's feeder series (GP2) and the already succesful A1GP series, that pits national teams against one another. The drivers aren't new, or particularly famous. It arrives into a marketplace for fans that is already incredibly stretched armed with only a gimic.

Obviously the hope is that the hoards of fans of the soccer teams will follow their attendent Superleague racing teams with the same passion, but it takes more than a name to inspire passion. Have they considered that soccer fans don't follow Auto Racing because they don't like it, rather than the fact they don't have team for their favourite team? Have they thought that it might be something other than a name that soccer fans follow? Have they noticed that soccer and Auto Racing are totally different?

I'm not sure how well it's going to work, I'd guess not well, but I'm probably not their target audience. You'd guess the organiser think they're onto a winner, if only by the huge amount of investment (and the flashy webiste).

Now, come with me into a realm of fantasy, where Superleague Racing comes to America, in search of not soccer clubs, but it's US equivalent in terms of popularity - football. This, patient NFLers, is where I need you.

Would you take your bumper sticker of car flag to the next level? Would you suddenly follow a race team if they happened to have the logo of your football team on the side? Come Monday morning would you be checking Superleague results and news alongside injury reports?  

Coming to your city?

If your opinion is the same as mine this situation will never happen.

Just about 3am Monday morning UK time. The NFL got itself at least one new fan. Me.

Of course I knew of the NFL before Sunday, as someone who looks on North American sports websites it’s very difficult to avoid it. I could give you a basic run down of the rules, the basic overview of the sport, but I’d start to babble incoherently once towards the minutiae of the sport. I’d never sought out a game on TV or check results on the internet the morning after, never picked a team to support.

This was the first year that UK terrestrial TV had the rights to the event, so with it following the highlights of the English soccer leagues, it was on the TV, mostly because I was lazy and there was nothing else on TV. What followed was some sort of one-person, sleep deprived sporting road movie without leaving my seat. The first task was to try and explain the sport to my housemate, something so impossible I ended up using Dudski’s ‘Their football vs Our football’ post as a teaching reference, although I’m not sure whether that actually helped things or not.

I started watching the game as the very definition of a neutral, but that wasn’t going to last long. The field goal went over, that started it. Had the game been the some-predicted Pats whitewash from the off I probably would have turned off the TV and the world would have remained turning. The Pats score did little to change that, even though they were now winning, it still didn’t feel like it was over, the New England offence wasn’t advancing at will, and while, to be frank, not much seemed to be happening it still wasn’t boring.

By this time my housemate had gone to bed, declaring defeat both by the hour of the day and the sport on offer. In stepped Foxsports, and more specifically Lisa H and her online superbowl party. In the lull this kept me awake better than caffeine, although I couldn’t help but feel I was missing out on the commercials. Perhaps it was watching the comments from the people on the site that turned me partial, the banter back and forth, and on one occasion an advert for an inter-racial dating site (No, honest). I promised myself I’d stay up to see the next score. However, from the start of the second quarter, history will show the next score was a long time coming. For keeping me awake for what was to come I have to thank them all.

By the time the next score came, I was beyond the point of all return. To chicken out now would be awful, I’d come so far, and to give up and miss the sharp end would be, well, a waste. With the next score coming from the Giants it also confirmed another thing. I would be a rubbish surrogate mother. And not just because I’m male. Having started impartial I was now a Giants fan, I’d become emotionally attached. That was it. I was not going to bed until this thing was done (and that included the very real risk, at the time, of OT). New England went back into the lead by 4. I didn’t care. I knew it wasn’t over, it was just a feeling but I knew there was something still to come. And what a something. The final drive for the touchdown was worthy of a movie. Most notably the somehow-avoid-being-sacked-still-manage-to-throw-c
atch-the-ball-off-your-helmet-while-being-pulled-b
ackwards play, that is surely the talk of offices and the stuff of montage reels for years to come.

At the winning touchdown the change was complete, when that score went in I cheered (quietly so as not to wake everyone up). Each Brady incompletion as they attempted to claw back way celebrated similarly, until the end.

I couldn’t work out why this had fixed me to my chair into the tiny hours of Monday. Experts were already describing it as a great game, but to be honest as someone who never paid much attention to the sport before I wouldn’t know a “good game” if he hit me round the head. Then I realised. THAT was sport. Games decided by the talents of athletes, not by rules. Events that millions of people around the world witnessed at once (satellite delay notwithstanding) and would be talked about around the world. A game which encapsulated the sport it represented, showed exactly what it could offer the world. A game that not only decided it’s champion’s, but advertised itself all around the world. And I was watching it.

I’m hooked now. There’s just one problem. I have to wait 7 months.   

WARNING: This is serious, verging on politics and foriegn policy. But I feel it needed saying. Although the title specify motorsport, this subject covers every sport.

The 2008 Lisbon-Dakar Rally, traditionally run at this time of year annually has been cancelled amid safety fears.

On Christmas Eve 4 French tourists were murdered in the African nation of Mauritania, where 8 of the rally's 15 stages pass through, and further threats have been made directly to the rally and it's participants.

There was, perhaps, no way of avoiding cancelling it, even at this eleventh hour. The logistics of the rally are mind-boggling - stages hundreds of miles long, where cars, bikes and trucks spend hours in isolation, in inhospitable terrain. Any possibility of increasing security would be similarly mind-boggling. Yes, helicopters are frequently used to track competitors, as well as for TV purposes, but these are as likely to be targets as anything else, and to physically man the route, well, the number of people would be huge.

Many may say that cancelling the Dakar is "letting the terrorists win", in a way it is. The cancellation has undoubtedly cost millions. The teams, who were ready in Lisbon, have wasted development, the driver and riders, a fair chunk of who are privateers, running the race out of their own wallet have wasted time (and money). The nations the rally was due to go through have lost out in the exposure they get, and the money brought into their economies. But where does general good, that done to the countries involved, become more important that any safety concerns.

But what does this, admittedly obscure event have to do with the state of sport in general.

This is not the first time that politics, especially terrorism, has come into conflict with sport. After 9/11 (by all means correct me if I am wrong) the opening season of the NFL was put back a week, and the Ryder Cup golf tournament was postponed, as it was meant to go ahead only weeks after the attack.

The problem at the heart of it is this. Should sporting occasions have something of the "Blitz Spirit" about them, that they will go ahead to show any agressor that we will carry on, indeed as a celebration, for example turning the Ryder Cup into an exhibition event, with Americans and Europeans playing together, rather than against each other. Or do we allow them to change what we do, ensuring security, but giving in.

I understand that with this issue there may be the fact that events are cancelled out of respect for the dead. This happened very recently when several cottish soccer matches were cancelled after Motherwell Captain Phil O'Donnell collapsed on the pitch last week, and died shortly afterwards. Would this man have wanted the sport he loved to stop for him, or would he like the fans of the sport and the teams, and the players themselves to do what they enjoy. What he enjoyed.

WARNING: The categories for this post reflect the fact it compares NASCAR to other sports, if you want indepth analysis of other sports stop reading now. Or at least don't yell at me. Please.

In the month of so I've been writing and reading here I've noticed a large number of people comment with things amounting to 'NASCAR officials are inconsistent, and as such they're ruining the sport'.

I'm not going to disagree, occasionally the officials get it wrong, and the race a few weeks back at Kansas showed in their worst light for a while. But I ask you, don't all officials get it wrong.

To people who watch the NFL, don't referees and line judges get it wrong when it comes to touchdowns and completitions a few times every week?

To fans of Ice Hockey, aren't there decisions every week, be it penalties or goal decisions that swing momentum in a match for one team or another every week?

To soccer fans, how many wrong penalty decisions, bookings or goal-li one rulings have you seen?

Don't officials/referees/umpires in all sports get it wrong occasionally?

Yes, yes they do.

So why single out NASCAR for criticism when they make a decision that is seen as wrong?

As I've seen written down somewhere, probably either here of NASCAR.com, it is a sport that effectively has 36 road games a year. But there are other reasons.

In just about every other sport there are several games played a week, or even a day. So if a bad decision is made, it may be commented on for 10 minutes in a highlight package, but you always know there is another play, fantastic performance, great goal, suprise result or other news worthy moment that means the decision and it's effects are soon forgotten by all by the immediately effected. In NASCAR there is one event a week, which means that one event has to keep the sports debate going for an entire 7 days, and it is always going to come back to a decision. As a case in point, it's only Tuesday and I've already read about a dozen several about Jeff Gordon's win and how the race was "boring" and a grand total of nada about Dave Blaneys 3rd place finish (Toyota reference over). That's how much a single aspect is foregrounded.

That leads me on to the next reason. In Football as bad decision may effect the two teams playing in that game, and perhaps the teams divisional rivals, but even then it's still a small percentage of the total fans who turn up to game, or watch on TV every week. In NASCAR all the eggs are in one basket. You have 43 drivers, teams, sets of fans pitted against each other every week (about 50 if you include followers of those that didn't even qualify). So any ruling is going to effect just about everyone who follows the sport, and for every 1,2 or 3 whose driver of choice benefits from the decision there at about 40 who will argue till they're blue in the face.

I've also seen NASCAR referred to as 'the WWE of racing', a description I'm rather fond of, but a great hater of at the same time. At time it does rather seem like the races are made of racing prat-falls, all phantom debris cautions and manufactured close finishes. I think the reason for this lies i the sport's history. Only in recent years has in found a mainstream audience (both nationally and internationally). In some respects it's still a smally company (it's run by a family for cryin' out loud) getting to grips with a global market of millions. It's still working out how to market itself, give them time and they will know what we already do. That occasionally it's good to see a race dominated by the best driver rather than have him overtaken on lap 399/400 due to a caution for dust, and that we don't need gimics to keep us interested.

Yes, NASCAR rulings are inconsistent, but so are all sports, it's just not shoved in your face 24/7.

Give the guys a break.

This year has been the year of the trans-atlantic sporting exchange.

• The Ducks and Kings have just returned from spliting a season opening 10 goal series played in London
• The Dolphins and Giants are set to play the first regular season NFL game away from the US when they meet at Wembley Stadium later this month

And in return we give to you

• Dario Franchitti to win the Indy 500 and IRL championship, before moving to NASCAR
• And....<groan> David Beckham

But why?

We (the UK and the US) have our own sports - Football, Baseball, Basketball and Ice Hockey of you and Soccer, Rugby and Cricket (snore) for us. So why try to force our sports on each other with overseas games and exported "stars"?

I gather that both the NHL games and the upcoming NFL game are total sell-outs, but what does that prove? No doubt there are people in the UK who like North American sports - I'm evidence of that myself, but I fear that all of the fans at the games are pre-existing fans. Moving regular games over here is going to attract very few new fans, not least because most American sports are seldom televised at reasonable hours and on reasonable channels as anything other than a novelty.

In my opinion such sport swapping is aimed at one of two goals.

Firstly. To expand the fan base of the American leagues themselves into Europe. As I mentioned before a handful of games are unlikely to make a difference. And for fans over here the amount of land and time seperating the nations is a problem. For example from following the NHL and NFL through the internet and what TV coverage we do get I follow two teams - the Vancouver Canucks and Green Bay Packers. As such I will look for their results on match days, try and see them on TV and look at any news stories concerning them.

However, I am unlikely to celebrate a win nor need consoling after a loss like a ntive of these cities and a life-long of these teams, and am even more unlikely to ever be able to see one of their games in person.

I am a casual fan. People like me do nothing to help a sport. To survive a sport needs hardcore fans. Fans to buy the merchandise, fans through the turnstiles, fans to attract sponsors and fans to pay the wages. Courting foriegn fans will only create more casual fans.

Secondly. To aid the set up and growth of spin-off leagues, such as (the now defunct) NFL Europe and the Elite League (British Ice Hockey). This also won't work. We have already seen this with NFL Europe, and it seems to be on-going with the MLS. First we have the problem of attacting fans. People no matter how much they like a sport, are unlikely to support a completely new team. The kind of history, rivalries and values that inspire the kind of loyalty critical to hardcore fans takes generations to create, and new leagues seems to want to start this overnight. This is time leagues like NFL Europe never got.

The second problem is that of quality. The players in such spin-off leagues (and as far and Hockey goes I'm not including the continental leagues here) aren't going to be of the same level as the players in the main league. As the NFL and NHL have been in existence long before their European/British counterpart, the same with the Premier League and La Liga before MLS. Any fan of these sports through one media or another is going to know of the original league and so know of their quality to the point where the new league is less of a draw. As another anecdote I live in a British city with a fairly good Ice Hockey team (relatively speaking) but I would still wager that your "average" sports fan is more likely to have heard of the Anahiem Ducks than the Sheffield Steelers.

So moving games overseas and signing big names is unlikely to help a sport grow, but it's a nive gesture and a media gimic...