Tom Talks

Saturday's burnout competition should be the last one

I have a new name for the burnout competition at Lowe's Motor Speedway: One and Done.

It was like a pyrotechnic demonstration before a basketball game, with smoke and sparks and cheering fans Saturday. But this was better because it was outside.

It still wasn’t good, though. Greg Biffle won the contest and with it $10,000 for the Greg Biffle Foundation, which does a lot of work supporting animal shelters.

The charity is worthy but was the victory?

Biffle won because he followed the rules. I didn’t even know it had rules. I thought there was rule, singular, and it was whoever made the most smoke come out of his car and looked the coolest as it did.

According to my scoring, Kevin Harvick finished third. He drove to the grandstands and spun his tires, the smoke pouring out and covering fans.

Kyle Busch finished second. He didn’t do anything impressive in the car, but he did good work out of the car. When he finished, he climbed on the hood, waved to the crowd and took his signature bow. The boos were louder than the engine. Nice.

Jimmie Johnson is my winner. Johnson’s car – each driver drove a Richard Petty Driving Experience model - shook and shimmied as he knocked down orange cones and spun his tires so hard there suddenly was a sound like an engine blowing and then silence. But Johnson didn’t blow his engine. He blew out his two back tires.

That’s commitment right there.

"Yeah, he definitely put on a show for fans," Biffle said. "We had to follow the rules a little bit and he knocked some cones down and some other things."

Enjoy it because even though the attempt was noble, adding something new to a pre-race show is always noble, it was not very interesting. Jimmie can’t do it by himself. And we are unlikely to see it again.

Frazz and Stephen Curry

   Yes, I love Chris Paul, always have. But Chris Paul didn’t make the comic strips this week. Another player who grew up and played college ball in N.C. did.

   “Frazz” is a consistently good comic about a janitor at an elementary school who runs and bikes and dispenses great advice to kids. Yes, I read the comics. How do you get through a morning without “Pearls Before Swine”?

   In Frazz, a kid bangs his head on the monkey bars and oozes blood.

    As Frazz takes care of him, a second kid asks if the first kid is dead says, “Dibs on his Wildcat jersey.”

   When the kid who banged his head turns out not to be dead, the second kid asks if he can still come to the bleeding kid’s birthday party.

   The bleeding kid says yes – provided the second kid brings a “size M Stephen Curry jersey.”

Sizing up the Panthers at mini-camp

I love mini-camp, love to see the new guys and the veterans and the long shots and the stars and try to figure out how they’ll come together and how good they’ll eventually be.

Some, of course, are good when they get out of bed. There were some outstanding catches Saturday, the best of them by the Panthers' Steve Smith. Smith had beaten two defenders, broke wide open and didn’t get the ball. I believe he alluded to that as he returned to the huddle.

Soon he sprinted down the left side and cut toward the middle in front of cornerback Ken Lucas. Matt Moore led him too much with his pass but Smith caught the ball anyway, diving to the ground and hanging on and drawing raves from his teammates.

The most unstoppable receiver was not 89, however. It was 81.

Who is 81?

"Dominique Thompson," says Panthers general manager Marty Hurney.

Thompson is one of the great receivers in William & Mary history. He, too, dove for a ball, successfully grabbing it.

Chris Hannon, a receiver out of Tennessee, also went high, way high, to snatch the ball out of the air.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ball, Hilee Taylor, the rookie defensive end out of North Carolina, showed a consistently good first step. By that, I mean that both times I watched him he was quick off the line.

But what do I know. Jeff Otah, the 6-foot-6, 324-rookie offensive lineman, was standing on the sideline. And I lost track of him.