Cannon Firing Line
Bigger Than Life (Almost)
By By Ellis G. Cannon
PSR Publisher

You don't have to be a hardcore race fan to know the view of the Indianapolis 500 has changed. Even casual fans know the landscape has been altered since the days of AJ, Rutherford, Mears and Mario.

Those were, after all, larger than life drivers, and personalities, on a larger than life stage. With the surging popularity of NASCAR, changing of the driving and technical guard at Indy and the price for internal schisms, things have settled at a different level for Indy - and it's not the top perch anymore.

That doesn't mean there's nothing to it. That would be wrong.

Where you stand on Indy - as Professor Fox told us in law school - depends on where you sit.

I continue to sit in Section 45, North Vista. Between turns three and four. And from that viewpoint, it still has the feeling of an event well worth it.

Of course, where one sits is not necessarily limited to your seat. It takes into consideration lots of different factors; variables that change.

As a kid, Indy was indeed bigger than life, like so many other events growing up, because they were not as accessible. You listened to the race live, then watched the replay on ABC that night. There were also the years you avoided the event thoughout the day and watched the race that night as if it were live.

Make no mistake, events as big as Indy 30 and 40 years ago were bigger than life on their own merit. But radio and replays didn't hurt, either.

Speed up, if you will, to the early 90's, when my brother, Henry, and I would make the annual trip for years with a rotating crew of friends. A bunch of guys in their 20s and 30s letting loose with a half-mill of their closest friends at the speedway. You figure it out.

Then The Split and The Weddings and The Families and all that come with them. You keep one eye on your crawling sons and the other on the start-finish line. You keep buying the tickets so you don't lose that spot in the North Vista.

But you still go back, only this time with a new crew, still with guys, but much, much younger. And your wife comes along to chaperon. And while the fans who have left took a lot of the entertainment with them, and some of today's drivers would have had to buy a ticket to get in the place years ago, that's OK, because you now sit in a different place than you did before.

While the skills and machines have changed at Indy, the need to develop personalities didn't. But it's still big; bigger than life. Almost.

Ellis Cannon's SportsLine Pittsburgh" airs weeknights, 6-8 p.m., on FM NewsTalk 104.7. Ellis is also a regular contributor on the "#1 Cochran Sports Showdown" aired Sundays at 11:35 on KDKA-TV.