CHEYENNE, WYOMING-

Wait, did that really just happen?

Did I just complete a week of show’s on SIRIUSXM after being suspended for the second time since I’ve been in the employ of SXM going back to when I first joined the company in 2009?

Wow.

I head into this weekend with a lot clearer head than I had going into last weekend – that’s for sure.

You do realize that this is the second consecutive year that I’ve gotten into hot water at the same time the Super Bowl has been played?

Last year in Indianapolis (I was there) and this year in New Orleans (I was not there).

The next Super Bowl is in New Jersey even though New York is going to take all the credit…next February if I’m still with SXM, I plan to go on vacation during the week the Super Bowl is being played — this way I’ll stay out of trouble.

Out of sight — and out of mind.

Anyhow, it was sheer joy to be back behind a microphone Tuesday-Friday this week.

It’s hard to believe it’s now February.

It’s hard to believe that in little more than a month I’ll be leaving the 40′s and heading on into the 50′s.

I know it’s so cliche’, but really now, where did the time go?

DINO COSTA.

50.

What?

It doesn’t seem possible!

I don’t feel like I’m going from 49 to 50 — I more feel like I’m 39 again and going on 40!

They tell me it’s just a number…is that true?

Whatever…

Listen up now, I can remember going from 39 to 40…and honestly that feels like it was only two weeks ago.

Bottom line?

I’m running out of time.

Then again — the world itself is running out of time even if some people fail to acknowledge the writing that’s up on the wall for all to see.

And so I’m turning 50…while Nascar’s Super Bowl of races — The Daytona 500 – is set to run for the 55th time in a few weeks.

I talked about NASCAR on my SHOW’S this past week a few times.

I’ve often told the story of my Nascar experiences earlier in my career as a talk show host in the great state of West Virginia.

In the early days of ‘DINO-Radio’, Nascar was routinely served up on my show’s on a daily basis.

I actually got into Nascar pretty good back in those days – in a way I miss that period of time.

I wanna love Nascar again – I stated that on my SHOW’S this past week – but Nascar refuses to become loveable in my estimation.

It’s sad, because the more politically correct Nascar has become, the less popular it’s become as well.

The more Nascar embraces the pop-culture and mainstream world, the more Nascar loses everything that made it special in the first place.

I mean is there anything more American than the automobile?

That oil spot on your garage floor that’s been there the last 29 years?

That pinch between your cheek and gums that provides you with pure tobacco pleasure without having to light up?

Valvoline.

STP.

Remember that Nascar?

Gone.

From Walmart to Wall Street.

Nascar has been out searching for the Justin Bieber and the MTV crowd — when the sport’s DNA is the complete antithesis to that environment.

One of Nascar’s biggest problems is that the industry (I refuse to call it a ‘sport’) has an identity crisis.

Nascar is seemingly betwixt and between – not sure who – or what they should be.

This new ‘Gen-6′ car is a step in the right direction, but its my feeling that Nascar’s R&D department didn’t go far enough.

Sure this new car more resembles a car you would see on Main Street, but they could have – and should have – gone back even farther — making the cars look even more ‘stock car-ish’.

People love nostalgia, and while I’ve been lambasting Nascar in recent years for developing cars that look nothing at all like a stock car, and everything like a space aged rocket ship, the industry should have crafted their cars to look more like the body types that we saw in the 1990 movie; ‘Days Of Thunder’.

Nascar also loses me completely when the college and NFL seasons come back around.

Why not race on Saturday night’s during the fall — and if not Saturday night’s, why not Friday night’s?

If I ran Nascar I’d fix it with a few quick decisions that make nothing but all the sense in the world.

How about the schedule?

The Daytona 500 is two weeks away — and that will begin a racing season that will end in late November of this year.

That’s way-way too long.

In addition, I’ve been begging Nascar for years to do something logical about their awful points system.

They tweaked this a few years ago — but they didn’t go anywhere near far enough.

The emphasis in Nascar is still on being consistent — more than on actually winning races.

In no other ‘sport’ does a system like this exist.

In the world of Nascar you don’t have to win a race – so much as you need to be near the front of a race.

A driver could theoretically win 7 races during the course of the season and finish in 5th place – and yet another driver who perhaps won 2 races during the season could win the championship.

Stupid.

The equivalent that I brought up on one of my show’s this week was when I said it would almost be like a system that rewards teams for getting the ball into the red zone — more than teams actually getting touchdowns.

In the world of football designed like Nascar, Team-A scored 3 touchdowns and lost the game because Team-B scored only 1 touchdown, however they drove the ball inside their opponents 20 yard line 5 other times and were rewarded for the ‘consistency’ of their drives.

The onus should be on winning at all costs.

The winning race team should get a point differential that simply dwarfs that of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th place finishers.

Top 10′s should be applauded, but not rewarded to the extent that Nascar currently allows for.

Speaking of ‘teams’, there is nothing in the world of Nascar that drives me crazier.

2 car stables, 3 car stables, even 4 car stables, race car drivers all trying to win, not necessarily for themselves, so much as for the ‘team’.

What the hell is this?

Nascar will explain the team concept by saying that there is simply not enough deep pocketed investors who can establish 43 individual and independent race cars.

I say, so what?

Would the racing not be much better and much more competitive if there were say, 32 cars at Daytona in a few weeks, all of them independently owned and operated, with none of them giving a rats ass about ‘helping’ someone else once the race begins?

Teams?

In my opinion it drastically reduces the integrity within the industry…please give me a race featuring drivers who are all out for themselves, a bunch of pit bulls on the track who want to do one thing and one thing only: WIN THE RACE.

I’ll watch Daytona like I do most every year…and yes, I’ve prepared myself to hear the name; ‘Danica Patrick’ about a gazillion times that day.

Bottom line: Nascar still needs tweaking, some of it with a minor twist here and there, and in a lot of other places Nascar needs an entirely new vision that replaces so many of the things that are curtailing its growth over the past several years.

On to other things…

If I’m a Jacksonville Jaguars fan, after the press conference and the state of the team address the franchise held this week the day after the Super Bowl was played, I’m feeling as optimistic about Jacksonville’s NFL future as I have in a long time.

I was initially skeptical of the new owner, Shad Kahn, but as I’ve kept a close watch on what they’ve done in Florida’s largest city the last several months, I get a firm sense that a commitment to rebuilding the Jaguars brand into one of the NFL’s very best is absolutely authentic.

As a city with one professional franchise, playing in a gorgeous football only stadium, I’ve always felt that Jacksonville, with the right people running the show, can be one of the NFL’s destination cities for players.

The early days of the Jaguars were a phenomenal success – and its really amazing when you consider that in the organization’s first several years they were selling out 76,867 for each and every game back then .

Amazing because at the time the stadium was at that enormous capacity — Jacksonville had the largest seat stadium — in the NFL’s smallest market.

As it is now, a 2-14 season they completed this past year was punctuated by some of the most abysmal football played before the home folks in the history of the franchise.

The Jaguars were not just bad at home this past season – they were historically putrid.

Yet they sold out each game and the market was not blacked out once.

Know what towns did have blackouts this past season?

Oakland.

San Diego.

St. Louis.

Buffalo.

Tampa Bay.

If we are considering any of the 3 Florida based NFL teams, the Jaguars swamped both the Dolphins and the Buccaneers this past season in terms of tickets sold – it wasn’t even close.

Yet the majority of the mainstream media continues to unfairly characterize Jacksonville as a bad NFL market.

What else…?

Last night after I came home from doing my show, I settled in to watch the movie; ‘Urban Cowboy’.

Why?

Because its always been one of my favorites, and because I had not seen the movie in nearly 20 years…maybe even longer.

It was either that reason, or maybe because I miss the 1980′s?

Could be.

Yeah that movie was sort of cheesy in certain respects, but there is something I find alluring about the film at the same time.

You watch that movie and you recognize what a hot little piece of ass Debra Winger once was.

As much as I thought Travolta pulled off the Cowboy role in that flick, I thought the movie came together more through one of the most underrated actors of all time, Scott Glenn.

Glenn played the paroled convict who comes between Travolta and Winger…for those who might be interested in seeing this picture I won’t give away any more details – but I will tell you that the ‘two step’ that Travolta danced – was really legit.

What else…?

Boy, the DENVER NUGGETS have just shriveled up and died out here in the west since dispatching Carmelo Anthony to the Knicks, eh?

As of this writing the Nuggets miss Anthony so much that they currently hold down the 4 spot in the tougher of the two NBA conferences, they just completed a record setting month of January, they’ve won 8 straight games, and they just dropped 128 points on one of the best defensive teams in the league — the Bulls.

You won’t find a Nuggets fan alive, not one with any credibility at least, who would reverse the trade that sent one of the NBA’s most over-hyped and overrated players to New York last year.

The fact is that Denver is a better team, much more multi-dimensional, deeper, more consistent —> and a tougher team to match up against without Anthony than with him.

Of course in New York, a Knicks fan has hailed the arrival of Anthony as close to the second coming as is possible.

I’ll take a team that scraps and fights, a club that plays defense, moves the ball, is terrifying in transition — and a team that is absent any primadonna’s who sulk and whine when shit doesn’t go there way.

I’ll take all of the above over a team that is essentially led by a temperamental malcontent who will eventually combust given more time to do so.

Just like the Knicks became a better team last season with the insertion of Jeremy Lin and the subtraction of Carmelo Anthony, the sobering news for all Carmelo sycophants, is that once Carmelo exited the Rockies — the Nuggets became a better team.

What else…?

Drugs in baseball?

Ryan Braun?

Gio Gonzales?

Anyone else?

I gotta tell you, I’m completely indifferent at this point.

I’ve become so desensitized to this bullshit that I’m at the point where I don’t even care any more.

How can I?

How can you?

If you have not become numb to this stuff yet I applaud you with a standing ovation.

I mean, who is really even mildly surprised by the latest revelation of what player on what team is accused of doing drugs of one kind or another in an effort to advance their career?

Who among us will be even a little surprised the next time something is reported?

The latest news with this Miami drug situation had absolutely no effect on me at all – sad I know – but true enough.

You know what my reaction was?

Thanks for news…but how many days until pitchers and catchers?

Isn’t that pathetic?

It is, but there’s no turning back, I’ve come to accept this as fact.

Our country – if not the world, cannot win the war on drugs, but Major League Baseball has a shot at it?

Truthfully I never cared in years gone by if football players used steroids (in fact I just assumed most of them did), same thing with hockey, and if you told me that Dwight Howard was taking PED’s, I’d think no less of him than I normally do these days.

But baseball?

The last virgin snow, right?

Baseball and numbers go together like no other sport.

How many games in a row did DiMaggio hit in?

You didn’t even have to think about it, right?

Now tell me who is the all time leader in touchdown passes and the exact number as well.

While you just went to the internet to get that answer, I’m here to tell you that it’s all over.

The proverbial barbarians have st0rmed the gates – taken over the city – and they rule with an iron fist.

Drug usage in all sports will never be stopped.

At this point I really don’t care anymore…I say let them take all the crap they want to, just let us watch the games, very much aware of the fact that we are now in a much different forest than ever before, and that the rules of engagement will continue to be twisted along the way.

Lastly on this issue, so far as baseball is concerned, does anyone really think that baseball wants to have more accurate testing with more exact and irrefutable results with those tests?

Really?

Okay, and lets say baseball gets to that point.

Is it really unfathomable for me to suggest that more exact and accurate drug testing might wipe out a third of the entire major leagues?

Then who do we watch?

Look it, if baseball was serious about this, they’d tell the players association to go fuck themselves, and that any test that came back positive for any substance not kosher would result in a year long ban.

Period.

End of story.

A second positive test means you’re expelled from the game for life.

Until baseball and any other sport comes equipped with these kinds of parameters then I’m too busy to care what they do — or don’t do.

Pitchers and catchers next week.

Hallelujah.