A PR person named Mary contacted me some time back to ask if I would "consider a blurb on Fantasy Fishing." She bugged me about it again this week. Well, Mary, I have considered, and here it is.

Fantasy Fishing invites people to log on to a website and "pick 10 professional anglers for their fantasy fishing teams." As I understand it, those pro anglers (read: bass fishermen) will compete in seven competitions, sponsored by Wal-Mart, which should offer a clue to the nature of the events. The fantasy player whose team scores the most points in the tournaments wins $1 million.

These events are organized by something called FLW Outdoors, whose chairman, Irwin L. Jacobs, apparently hopes to turn tournament fishing into "the next NASCAR."

To my way of thinking, one NASCAR is one too many, and to speak of fishing in the same sentence with NASCAR is about as close to sacrilege as I can imagine. I rank the oxymoronic "motor sports" as among the dumbest human activities on the planet. To link fishing in any way with NASCAR would be just about the worst fate I could imagine for the sport of fishing, short of legalizing the use of cyanide and TNT in trout streams. So I can only hope and wish that FLW Fantasy Fishing remains a twisted fantasy -- though, as my sainted Swedish grandmother used to say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Anglers always compete, I suppose, but any angler who performs a victory dance on the banks of the Upper Dam Pool because he caught more salmon than his companions should be banished to some warm, weedy southern bass lake where he can join the ranks of meatheads and lob pork rinds at largemouths while tossing his Bud empties over the side.

Thanks for the opportunity, Mary. Motorheads and meatheads, start your invective.