Have you been sitting there on your couch thinking, "Good grief, it's January 7th already, when is NASCAR going to start?" Well, if you have, you need to find a couple more hobbies, but the good news is that the Speed channel is kicking off its NASCAR season this week with NASCAR Preseason Thunder. The season just gets longer and longer.

They will be covering Nextel Cup testing at Daytona. You can get a schedule of the shows on the Speed website. The actual race isn't until February 18th, but Speed knows where their bread is buttered. NASCAR is to them like the football team is to Notre Dame. It pays for everything else.

My early season predictions are for Jimmy Johnson and Tony Stewart to come out strong. Denny Hamlin will prove that last season wasn't a fluke. Kurt Busch will be back in the hunt now that the #2 team has had a season to gel. The #24 team will remain inconsistent, possibly leading Jeff Gordon to fire his crew chief. Robbie Gordon will crash some people, but it won't be his fault. And Michael Waltrip will continue to get all kinds of camera time despite never even getting a whiff of being competitive.

So you love FOX's news and sports programming, but watching it on your tiny television screen just kind of leaves you unfulfilled, doesn't it? Well, this is the time to rejoice, FOXheads, because News Corp has taken over the gigantic Panasonic Astrovision screen in New York's Times Square and will be airing three hours of live programming every day, including full hours of Fox and Friends, FOX Report with Shepard Smith and FOX5's Good Day New York. Sports fans will be treated to live broadcasts of Major League Baseball's League Championship and World Series, the Daytona 500, and football coverage from the NFL and the College Bowl series. News Corp took over access of the screen from NBC on October 1. Someday I hope to have enough money to put my own content on that screen. I'm thinking 24 hours a day of myself having dental work performed.