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I'm watching a movie starring the incomparable Cary Grant and Jean Arthur called Only Angels Have Wings. "A sassy chorus girl falls in love with a seat-of-the-pants pilot in South America."

That's Jean. That's Cary.

On Monday night, Clemson lost. Where I live, that's big news. I'll get fewer sunspots, though, without that orange everywhere. As we say in these parts, “they done good and give it their all.”

Here in upstate South Carolina, where the NASCAR TV ratings are frequently the highest, the Clemson Tigers are done. Both basketball teams in Columbia, men and women alike, are undefeated as these words are written. In this state, basketball only gets big when football isn't, so that means it's pretty big right now in the Gamecocks' roost.

However, what all this together means is the folks are ready for racing. When the Carolina Panthers are done, folks will be 'bout near demanding it, and, somewhere in the course of Thanksgiving till now, NASCAR has gone from "the racing sucks, and damn the rain, and I can't stand that so-and-so" to "I'd crawl on my hands and knees across a desert of broken glass to see a stock car race right now." The Super Bowl is on February 7. The Daytona 500 is February 21.

Even if the Panthers go as far as they can go, the Carolinas will go from Cam Newton to cam shafts.

Trust me. NASCAR may not be as big as it once was, but it's still big.

Since you are reading this, I'm assuming that you like NASCAR. Its current malaise is most associated with a decline in support among the young. You want to do something for the future of the sport? Take a kid to a track. Is the Daytona 500 too pricey for you? Join the crowd, the smaller crowd, the one at the local track.

When I look back on my boyhood, I doubt I would have become a racing fan had it not been for my dad taking me to Darlington and Greenville-Pickens, and Ralph Barnes, who ran the meat market at my grandfather's grocery store, taking me through the night to Bristol, where I watched the Volunteer 500 at age seven. Jarrett won it. Ned Jarrett.

From the time I watched that race, I was hooked, and I think that lesson applies even to the earbud-wearing, Snapchatting, rap-loving, would-be gangstas of today.

Watching NASCAR on TV breeds casual fans, which are really contradictions in terms. "Casual" is antithetical to "fans." A kid may enjoy watching on TV with his dad, but to get the fever, he (or she) needs to hear the roar, feel the breeze as the field zips by, look for his favorite driver, and make sure he isn't the one who wrecked, when the crowd rises and people start pointing.

Saving up for months, and camping in the infield, and staying there for days, just to catch the occasional thrill of watching incredibly fast automobiles roaring by in close formation, requires love. It requires fanaticism. TV might make a kid like racing. Being there is what makes him (or her) love it.