THE BIG SPORTS WEEKEND

We've been talking a lot of baseball this week with 4 out of the 5 ones to watch. There are some great pennant and wildcard races this year so it does make sense. But in the interest of balance, I'm staying away from our former national pastime this weekend to keep TOTW your diversified sports leader.

Saturday, August 5 - PRO FOOTBALL: Hall of Fame Class of 2006

The ceremonies in Canton always seem to glorify football greats from generations before my own. Not this time. The class of 2006 is led by QBs Troy Aikman and Warren Moon. Aikman was a winner. With 3 Super Bowl wins, his strong stats could have been even better if they needed to be. But Aikman's Cowboys were so good during the 1990s that the game was usually over by halftime. Moon was nearly as dominant as Dan Marino for a decade, but he had a longer road to greatness, which only adds to his illustrious career. The late DE Reggie White will be enshrined posthumously. White was a great football player, but seemingly an even better man. I can't believe loudmouth analyst John Madden wasn't already in the HOF. The youngest coach in NFL history racked up 103 wins in 10 years and won a Super Bowl along the way. Since then he's basically replaced that deep-voiced guy from NFL Films as the voice of football in America. Finally, LB Harry Carson and T Rayfield Wright will also be honored. These are the questionable selections that give Canton the knock of sometimes serving as the Hall of Very Good. Carson was a nice player but is best remembered for inventing the Gatorade dunk!

Sunday, August 6 - NASCAR: The Brickyard 400

This race has become a modern classic. Though I wasn't raised as a gearhead, I've followed auto racing longer than many of the Johnny-Come-Lately's who have made NASCAR America's fastest growing sport. I can remember watching the very first Brickyard 400 in the mid 1990's and it has since become the best race of the summer. While the 2.5 mile race allows fast cars to flourish, unlike other NASCAR superspeedways, the Brickyard wasn't designed for heavy stock cars. It's not a traditional high banked oval like Talladega or Atlanta. Instead, the Brickyard rewards a car that handles well in the turns where drivers must come off the gas before accelerating their 750 horsepower engines down the long straightaways. My pick: Jimmy Johnson. This appears to be JJ's year. A win in Indy would follow-up on the magic of his Daytona 500 win.

Finally, I too am enshrining Troy Aikman in the TOTW Hall of Fame for scoring many a touchdown with country music's sexy vixxen, Lorrie Morgan.