Monday afternoon mumblings -- Big Ten mostly gets it right this weekend

One of my favorite pastimes on this blog is mocking the Big Ten for its pomposity, for thinking it belongs on a pedestal as the example of what a major-college conference should be.

But the league isn't run by chimps. You don't start up a television network and annex a showcase football program like Nebraska's within a couple years time without having some smarts to go with ambition.

Sunday, the league announced its conference football title-game would be stationed in Indianapolis through 2015, while its men's and women's basketball tourneys would rotate between Chicago and Indy through 2015.

I wanted Chicago's Soldier Field to get the football, but knew that was highly unlikely. The weather on the first Saturday of December in Chitown is usually cooperative for outdoor football, but not always. With Indy's indoor Lucas Oil Stadium, you can get the league title-game off the ground without any threat of frigid or snowy weather being the story instead of the game itself. If you're the Big Ten, you want the game to be the thing.

Fine. Then I would have liked Chicago to have gotten all the basketball. I like Indy's Canseco Fieldhouse more than Chicago's United Center, but basketball is a TV sport, and an arena is an arena on the tube. Chicago is one of America's iconic cities. Indianapolis? It has plenty of positives, but it's famous for an auto race more than anything else.

Plus, the tournament drew better crowds in Chicago than it has in Indy.

Indianapolis scored a coup by getting the football and keeping a share of the basketball. They do something right there. The next Super Bowl -- assuming there is a 2011 NFL season -- is in Indy. Why, I have no idea.

I SPENT THE WEEKEND in Greater Kansas City for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race there. I was in the pits for most of Sunday's race. While I thought the race itself was lackluster, the action in the pits definitely was not.

Until you've seen a first-class race team organize and execute a pit stop in person, you can't fathom how they do it. I've seen it, and I still can't fathom it.

I know a lot of people who are big fans of team sports, but have disdain for NASCAR. Hey, whatever you like. But to me, covering it wasn't much different than covering a pro or college game.

Press conferences where a lot of meaningless questions get a lot of meaningless answers. Days of hype and speculation that turn out to have been a waste of time, while the story that develops was unforeseen by all. Blatant commercialism, and a lot of people with their own selfish interests trying to make a buck. Fans who fly flags and wear the colors of their favorite drivers, feeling a personal connection to them even though they often don't really exist.

Some say it's just cars going round and round. That's a pretty accurate description. But isn't football and basketball just players going back and forth, back and forth? In itself, is any sport particularly meaningful? It's the people who are interesting, not the games. Richard Childress, a 65-year-old car owner, allgedly put young star driver Kyle Busch in a headlock Saturday after as race, and punched him? Now that's interesting.