Introducing the Minis

No matter what form of media in which one dabbles, there is almost always a period of inactivity at the conclusion of the news season. Baseball season, football season, television season, political season – they all have an “off season”. IndyCars are no different, as evidenced by the huge drop in readership over the last few weeks.

Fortunately for your humble host there exists a time-tested method for dealing with this down time, for filling in a news cycle in the absence of actual news. The answer? One word: Awards. There’s no better way to recap a season full of stuff than to invent some categories, declare winners and losers, and of course wrap it all in a package bearing a snappy name.

The Oscars. The ESPYs. The Oreos. You get the idea.

Truth be told, when the 2007 season had ended your humble host had decided to hash out an awards plan for My Name Is IRL. However, as you might have noticed, that didn’t happen because the news cycle went askew. As soon as the IndyCar series season ended the two previous series champions went silly for stock cars, resulting in an unprecedented (and regrettably abundant) coverage of N-Word races. Of course that wasn’t the half of it, as even more attention was paid to the IndyCar driver entered in the nation’s most watch dancing contest, where he performed so well that your humble host was forced to briefly surrender his man card by watching every single episode. Oh, the humanity!

But today the 2008 season is over, and there is neither a second wave of IRL drivers heading to stock cars, nor is there anyone entered in any fall reality shows. It might be a year late, but ladies and gentleman it is with great pride that I announce the First Annual “My Name Is IRL” Awards, a.k.a. “The Minis”. Catchy, eh?

The categories are simple, but the process is not. OK, the process is extremely simple – I pick the winners and losers with no input from you whatsoever. Hey, it’s my site, and honestly you don’t want me handing over the duties here to entire Anonymous family. I mean, some of you might get your feelings hurt if you voted for someone and then they lost, because then you would cry foul, say the voting was rigged, and probably leave and never come back. I’ve prevented this nightmare scenario from occurring by simply “fixing” the awards beforehand. My entire personnel votes on all nominees and winners, and since I am the only employee around here I can assure you all awards will be given as a result of unanimous voting.

Here are the categories:
• Achievement in Televised Reporting
• Driver of the Year
• Moment of the Year
• Most Improved Driver
• Race of the Year
• Rookie of the Year

The nominees and winners for each category will be revealed in no particular order over the next few days, so be sure to check back to see if your favorites have won. If they haven’t, well, there’s always next year.