Last Sunday at the NASCAR Café inside the Sahara, a sizable crowd was watching everything from football to all-girl bartenders to attempts at eating a 6-pound burrito in less than 17 minutes.

Yes, it had just about everything except NASCAR.

"We’re not just motorsports, it’s all sports," said Brian Blessing, ESPN radio personality who brings his 2-3 p.m. weekday radio show (co-hosted by GamingToday columnist Micah Roberts) here on Mondays, along with handling contest giveaways all day Sunday. "NASCAR Café was so successful that we needed to branch out."

And so was born a marriage, if you will, with ESPN, Miller beer and the Café that allowed the facility to "step up its game" with a clientele who is very much local, even though the Café is located on the Strip.

"We are absolutely pleased with the nice local following that NASCAR Café has generated," said Randy Goldich, the venue’s manager. "People come here rather than go across the street to the big places. We offer a lot of prices, a great menu and especially want to emphasize all sports."

Indeed it’s not just about NASCAR anymore, although you can’t miss the stock cars on display outside the restaurant and the numbers on the slim, vertical boards seen at all motorsports tracks to indicate car number and race position.

"We started out doing Monday night football last year," Blessing said in between prize give-away announcements to the crowd. "Then we did the playoffs, March Madness and World Cup soccer. Expanding it beyond NASCAR worked out great and the customers came back."

Virtually anyone who came to the Café on Sunday won something, whether it was a shirt, tickets or NFL team paintings (it happened to be Cincinnati and New Orleans this week).

"The tie-in with ESPN and Brian has been great," Goldich said. "It gave us a lot of media exposure to get the word out that we were not just a locals place for NASCAR, but all sports."

Blessing said the four top fan bases for NFL Sunday there are San Diego, Pittsburgh, Oakland and Chicago.

"That’s the way it looks to me and I’m here all the time," Blessing said. "Heck, I practically live here and I really enjoy hanging out with the customers and staff. They are great people here and ESPN’s association with Randy and the Café has been terrific."

The menu includes healthy-sized burgers with curly fries, eggs of any style with steak 24 hours a day and this enormous burrito.

"Joey Chestnut (four-time defending Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating champion), ate it in 6 minutes!" exclaimed Blessing, who noted that anyone consuming this 6-pound burrito in less than 17 minutes wins a free two-night stay at the Sahara. "It’s just an example of the fun we have here each week."

Attempting to devour a 6-pound burrito is not in our plans, but a return visit here is.

CONGRATS JOSH: All the best goes to Josh Poole, who was named to succeed Zack Goldberg as the new Director of Race and Sports at Palace Station.

Poole comes over to Palace after a stint at Fiesta Rancho. Zack moved over to Wildfire.

OTM’s college play

Army +8 vs Navy: Just one college game on the docket this week now that we are entering bowl season. This is the first time I can think of that Army, Navy and Air Force are all going bowling in the same year. While Army is better, there’s still the matter of eight straight losses to Navy and none really that close. I think the Cadets make this one interesting, finally. ARMY.

last week                     NCAA                       PCT

3-2                               28-21-1                     57.1