Bowyer conquers Dover in Nationwide race

Autoracing Betting Lines

09/26/2009 - Dover, DE (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Clint Bowyer grabbed the lead from Kyle Busch with 83 laps remaining and then held off Mike Bliss and Brad Keselowski in a seven-lap shootout to the finish to win Saturday's Dover 200 Nationwide Series race at Dover International Speedway.

Busch, who won at Dover one year ago, had the dominant car for the first half of the 200-lap race but Bowyer came on strong shortly after the midway point and took over from there.

Bowyer, the 2008 Nationwide champion, recorded his second win in his ninth start this season. The Richard Childress Racing driver also posted his eighth career victory, including a win here in September 2006.

"This hasn't been the best year for our Nationwide team," Bowyer said. "[Crew chief] Doug Randolph and the guys on this No.29 team dug deep. This is a new race car."

Bliss, driving the No.11 Toyota CJM Racing Toyota for the first time this season, finished second, while Keselowski came in third. Keselowski bumped Denny Hamlin from behind, sending Hamlin into the inside wall after he was running in the fourth spot. The incident set up the seven-lap sprint to the finish.

"[Denny] left a hole to pass him, and at this level, it's different than other levels because we have spotters, and I know for sure, my guys told me, that his spotter told him I was down there, and he just tried to take advantage of me," Keselowski said. "I'm not going to be pushed around."

At the conclusion of the race, which was threatened by incoming rain, Hamlin waited for Keselowski on pit road, but both teams prevented any post-race altercations that might have occurred.

"[Brad] has no idea how to race," said Hamlin, who finished 27th. "He'll get a ride and hang around for a couple of years. Then people will realize that he's not really that good."

Keselowski will move over to the Sprint Cup Series next year, driving the No.12 Penske Racing Dodge, which is currently occupied by David Stremme.

Busch encountered radio issues and had difficulty communicating to his team throughout the race. He also dealt with a loose car in the late stages before he wound up with a fourth-place finish.

"We had a great car in the beginning," said Busch, who started on the pole and led a race-high 109 laps. "We might have started off a little bit tighter than everybody else, but the more the race went on the looser we got for some reason."

Busch became the second driver in NASCAR's second-tier series to lead more than 2,000 laps for the season. Sam Ard led a total of 2,099 laps during his 28-race championship season in 1984. Busch also padded his lead to 211 points over Carl Edwards, who finished fifth.

Jason Leffler, Reed Sorenson, Scott Speed, David Reutimann and Jason Keller completed the top-10.

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FOOTBALL BETTING : Crabtree's base deal: six years, $32 million

Football Betting

In the wake of the news that the 49ers have signed receiver Michael Crabtree after an extended holdout, there has been not a hint of the dollars to be paid to Crabtree.

And since this means that his agent hasn't leaked the numbers, it means that his agent feels no specific motivation to do so.

Possibly because his agent isn't all that thrilled to have his name on the deal.

So the numbers will come from sources other than Crabtree's agent. And we've gotten our mitts into them.

Per a league source, Crabtree has signed a six-year, $32 million contract. (The total includes guaranteed money, base salaries, and the one-time incentive based on achieving minimum playing time.)

The deal also includes $17 million in guaranteed money.

As reported elsewhere, the deal can void to five years based on performance triggers, wiping out a final year base salary of $4 million. But they won't be easily reached.

The source tells us that, in his first four seasons (including 2009), Crabtree must either qualify for two Pro Bowls, or he must qualify for one Pro Bowl in one year and he must participate in 80 percent of the offensive snaps in a separate year in which the team makes the playoffs.

In other words, if in 2010 he qualifies for the Pro Bowl and the team makes the playoffs and he participates in 80 percent of the snaps, he'll still need to make it to the Pro Bowl or achieve the 80-percent/playoffs in another season.

Since the chances of Crabtree making the Pro Bowl or participating in 80 percent of the offensive snaps this year is roughly zero percent, he'll have three years to get it done.

And it won't be easy. Frankly, he'll be hard pressed to make it to one Pro Bowl in three years with the likes of Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks, DeSean Jackson, Johnny Knox, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings, Roddy White, T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the same conference for sportsbook betting.

So, by all appearances, it's a six-year deal. And at $17 million in guaranteed money, the per-year guarantee is a tepid $2.83 million per year.

There's another problem with the deal -- it has no mid-tier incentive package. Instead, the additional $8 million that Crabtree can earn (pushing the max value to six years, $40 million) requires the kind of unrealistic, mega-star performances that no rookie is likely to ever achieve.

So while the contract paid to Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji covers five years and pays $22.5 million, he has the ability (if he's a solid player) to make up the difference between his base deal and Crabtree's five-year, $28 million haul via the mid-tier incentive package in Raji's deal.

And unless Crabtree meets the performance thresholds necessary to void the sixth year, he'll be stuck under contract for another year at a base salary of only $4 million.

There's one other area of concern with the deal. Crabtree, per the source, received no option bonus. Instead, he has significant money tied to a fairly new device known as a "discretionary salary advance," which unlike an opition bonus is subject to forfeiture if Crabtree decides in a year or two that he wants to hold out for a better deal. (We're also told that the 49ers have included language that would make certain escalators subject to forfeiture, too.)

Meanwhile, the deal falls well short of the mark for which Crabtree and agent Eugene Parker were aiming -- the five-year, $38.25 million contract paid by the Raiders to receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick in the draft.

Even if Crabtree successfully voids the final year, he'll make more than $2 million per year less on average than Heyward-Bey.

Thus, as we explained earlier in the day, this is a deal that Crabtree could have done in July, which would have given him a much better chance of making a contribution to the 49ers during his rookie year.

So while the final outcome can be described as win-win, the broader view suggests that it's really a lose-lose situation.

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