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TOM SORENSEN
The Charlotte Observer
Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008
• Among fans at the Daytona 500 today will be South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier. Spurrier is a Dale Earnhardt Jr. fan.
• Jared, the Subway Sandwich spokesman, spends more time on TV than Paula Abdul yet you can't dislike him.
Jared is from Indianapolis, not far from Columbus, Ind., where Tony Stewart grew up and lives. Stewart appears in a commercial with Jared and has enormous respect for him.
"Think about what that kid did and how he did it," says Stewart. "There isn't anybody I know of that lost that much weight and kept it all off for so long. I lost 20 pounds and gained 10 of it in less than a year."
Jared, who once weighed 425 pounds, weighs 190 now. He's a role model for anybody that has tried to lose weight or lost it and found it. As Stewart, whose belly pokes against his black T-shirt, talks, he looks at a reporter in front of him. "You haven't lost weight, I haven't lost weight," he says. "I'm with you, bro."
Stewart walks to the man and they bump fists. If there's been a warmer moment in Daytona this week I haven't seen it.
• I share an elevator with a man who has shoulder-length hair and ripped up - but not fashionably ripped up - jeans and a woman wearing sweat pants and a baggy T-shirt. They just returned from the track. I ask them how traffic was. "It was no problem for us," the woman says. "We took a limo."
