Wishing you and all our soldiers, home and abroad, a happy and safe Thanksgiving…..

NASCAR’s enormous popularity is waning and having a driver win four consecutive Sprint Cup championships, as Jimmie Johnson just did, isn’t going to help the sport.

Part of the problem is Johnson himself.

He is well-respected and well-liked but he doesn’t have any charisma.

It’s not that NASCAR fans hate him. They don’t. He doesn’t give them any reason to hate him.

He doesn’t say anything controversial. He rarely complains. He has been happily married for several years.

The problem is most have no feelings about him one way or the other.

The only controversial aspect of his team is crew chief Chad Knaus, who has been suspended twice after teaming up with Johnson in 2006 for illegally altering Johnson’s car to try to gain an advantage.

He received a four-race and a six-race suspension but Johnson was never docked any points.

It’s much better for the sport to have someone who is hated (i.e. Jeff Gordon) or cherished (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) battling for the championship.

When he was winning championships, nobody got booed more at New Hampshire Motor Speedway during the driver introductions than Jeff Gordon.

Part of it had to do with his rivalry with the beloved Dale Earnhardt Sr. and the carry over after Earnhardt’s death in 2001.

Fans saw Gordon as the anti-Earnhardt. He was too well-groomed (i.e. a pretty boy). They thought he was aloof, arrogant and a complainer.

Earnhardt was the working class hero. A self-made racer who earned the name The Intimidator for his aggressive driving.

These days, nobody gets cheered more than his son, Dale Jr.

But Junior is really testing the loyalty of his fans with his 25th place finish in the points standings.

He also drives for Hendrick Motorsports, which not only claimed the championship with Johnson, it also had the second and third-place drivers in 50-yard-old Mark Martin and Gordon.

There’s always next year for Junior……..

The New England Patriots baffle me.

How can a team with so many offensive weapons have trouble converting third-and-short situations in the second halves of games?

They would be 10-0 instead of 7-3 if they didn’t fall apart in the fourth quarter of their three losses.

I realize their defense is in a rebuilding process and didn’t come through with a game-changing stop in those losses. But I didn’t expect them to.

I do expect the offense to finish games off.

How can you not make two yards on two plays as they did in the loss to the Colts?

Why don’t they have a few Wildcat plays in which the snap goes directly to a running back?

They will get a gauge of exactly where they are next Monday night when they travel to New Orleans to face the 10-0 Saints…….

It was a treat watching those State Championship football games last Saturday. It was like watching old AFL games: all offense, little defense……It appears Charlie Weis has anticipated his fate as the soon-to-be-fired Notre Dame football coach. College sports are much different than pro sports. There’s a lot more to it. You can’t just coach like you can in the NFL. The Irish defense, or lack thereof, has to be addressed first by the new coach.