NFL push of fantasy football a life saver for NASCAR

OAK ISLAND, N.C. — This family vacation has proven to be a blessing, but priorities must prevail. At 10 a.m. Sunday I was benching Chad Henne for Andy Dalton (ouch!) and feeling confident that C.J. Spiller would continue to be incorporated into the Bills’ offense (double ouch!). By the afternoon I was ready to send a check to Wes Welker and some thugs to Mark Sanchez. (Who exactly told you that Santonio Holmes had entered the Witness Protection Program?) My whining, while important to me, is not the point. The point is that I was able to keep up with all the pitfalls and promise of a fantasy football Sunday via the ESPN ticker while watching Tony Stewart not run out of gas for the second straight week. While I’m sending a check to Welker, NASCAR should be sending a check to the NFL, Yahoo! and everybody else who has pushed fantasy football into the stratosphere over the last few years. Those folks have helped NASCAR survive a rough patch. By 2004, the first year of the Chase, NASCAR...