GOOD OL' BORE OF NASCAR.

Byline: STEVE DILBECK

The cheaters are coming, and aren't you just so excited?

Those rule-bendin', death-defyin', rebel-yellin' conglomerates masquerading as simple good ol' boys.

It is Southern California's turn to host the strangest, would-be athletic event in the country.

It's NASCAR, which is so huge it defies mortal logic. NASCAR, which has easily become America's most popular form of autoracing. NASCAR, which is so marketable its sponsors have sponsors.

It's a phenomenon and I do not get it. I am absolutely amazed.

Guys drive around a narrow oval in supposed stock cars at ridiculous speeds, trying to squeeze into miniscule openings for hours at a time, and people are stunned when they go bouncing like pinballs?

Where is the great attraction? If you like breathtaking turns and high- speed shenanigans, drive the 405 some evening.

NASCAR is the dullest major spectator activity in America. Ever actually gone to one of these goofy things?

You sit crammed in the bleachers watching cars go flying by for mere seconds. They drive 500 miles and you see maybe 4 miles of the actual action.

Oooh, be still my beating heart. You see almost no real racing, unless you're watching the monster video screen. Might as well stay home and save the ears.

Listen, it is not a sport. Got that? Not a sport.

A sporting event doesn't rely on something mechanical. It is not about who has the best engineers. Not about who has the best tires or spark plugs or cleanest motor oil.

That's not to say the drivers aren't highly skilled, aren't courageous and don't sweat alot.

But they're not athletes.

Kobe Bryant flies past opponents who are all wearing the same clothes, playing on the same court and using the same ball. Dan Gable wrestled his way through an entire Olympics without allowing a single point because of will and ability and training, not because he had a better carburetor.

If a driver doesn't finish a race because his engine blows, that's about a machine, not athleticism.

I used to watch my dad make some pretty nasty moves on Foothill Boulevard, but no one ever confused him with an athlete.

This was all much easier to take when NASCAR was mostly this Southern abnormality that you could just sort of write off as a bunch of frustrated ex-moonshiners who still thought it was really cool to fly the Confederate flag and drive around in circles.

NASCAR is big-time nationwide now, however, and this week it comes to Fontana for the Auto Club 500.

Now this is a city that deserves something nice to happen to it, with its steel mill long closed and the once powerful Fontana High football team reduced to prep afterthought.

No doubt it does wonders for the local economy, although NASCAR remains a tougher sell in Southern California and the speedway can't fill its 90,000 seats. Maybe we're just too sophisticated, or at least, rational.

Still, Fontana bellies up a week after "The Great American Race," the Daytona 500.

That's supposed to be like the Super Bowl of auto racing -- only you don't play another regular-season game in the NFL the week after the Super Bowl.

And wasn't Daytona an interesting race last weekend, in a soap opera kind of way? Before the week began, Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced he wanted out of his racing contract, which only belonged to Dale Earnhardt Inc. Something about him and his step-mommy not getting along.

Then five different drivers had to go without their crew chiefs, all suspended for cheating. They mostly did small things to give their cars slight advantages, because the cars are all so similar that any small advantage is seen as huge.

Then they ran the race, which offered 400 miles as NASCAR's answer to insomnia, 100 miles of destruction derby and two ultimately silly bonus miles that included yet another multi-car crash.

Yet curiously not a yellow flag, as the rules state, allowing Kevin Harvick to sneak ahead of Mark Martin -- leading at the time of the crash -- by the width of a Ricky Bobby whisker.

All that NASCAR high ground during the week as it suspended crews, and then it couldn't find its little yellow flag?

And apparently people just ate it up. It killed in the ratings, an estimated 17.5 million tuned in to watch this snoozefest on wheels. P.T. Barnum laughs somewhere.

The unspoken attraction to watching NASCAR, and all auto racing, is the thrill so many receive in viewing the crashes. There's nothing like the sound of metal scraping metal and cars going airborne.

These are the same people who jam freeways, slowing to a crawl to get a good view of the accident on the other side of the interstate.

If they actually ran these things for 500 miles without a crash, ratings would plummet. NASCAR would turn into lawnmower racing, though at least the grass would get trimmed.

Crashes, of course, can lead to injuries, and in extreme cases, death. Three drivers have died at Daytona in the past 14 years, most notably, Dale Earnhardt Sr.

There's something macabre about watching an event, and in the back of your mind, wondering if today someone will eat it for the final time.

I get none of it. Truth be told, my mind isn't even open to it.

I'd call it a sport for the easily entertained, but that would require that it was a sport. And entertaining.

I would continue, but by now I'd be going in circles, and we all know how mind-numbing that can be.

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