After a brief hiatus, the Sports On TV column returns with one of the most requested shows ever: Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s 16-season strong cultural landmark, ‘South Park’.

‘South Park’ has been around since 1997, and has changed along with the times. When it started, Parker and Stone were getting $1,200 to make video Christmas cards for Fox executives. In 2012, they are influential, Tony Award-winning, multi-millionaire media moguls. One thing hasn’t changed: in season one, Kenny was getting ripped apart by football players. In season 16, Tom Brady is guzzling a Gatorade bottle of a child’s semen. Sports are one of the weirdest, stupidest, most ritualistic and overly-glorififed things human beings can do, and ‘South Park’ has been in tune with that since the very beginning.

So, in the Interest of easing us back into regular Thursday columns, here are my choices for the 20 greatest South Park sports moments. Like a lot of the shows we do, there are a ton of moments we had to leave out, so a part 2 will probably happen. If we left out your favorite moment, or you have something to say about a moment we chose, be sure to drop down into our comments section and let us know.

As an added bonus, participating in the discussion and sharing the column on Twitter or Facebook (courtesy of one of those handy buttons at the bottom of the post) will net you the BAT DAD BADGE. You don’t want the Bat Dad Badge? I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA.

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Earlier this year, Toyota pitted four racing stars against each other for the Toyota Racing Dream Build Challenge with a goal of making fans choose which driver’s name would be on a check for $50,000 for his or her charity. That idea alone is great, because we love when famous people and giant companies do good things for people in need. However, knowing that racing fans (myself included) are mostly insane and love crazy cars, Toyota’s challenge involved each driver taking a popular Toyota vehicle and turning it into an awesome racing machine. America, my friends.

NASCAR’s Kyle Busch (above) and Clint Bowyer and NHRA’s Antron Brown and Alexis DeJoria are the drivers currently competing for their causes, and with five days left in the voting process, before the winner is revealed at the 2012 Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas on Oct. 30, Busch is in the lead with his “Rowdy” Toyota Camry. Brown and DeJoria are battling for second place with their respective “Family DragQuoia” (Sequoia) and “Tundra Pre-Runner” models. Trailing them all is Bowyer’s Prius, because fuel efficiency can kiss our red, white and blue butts.

But don’t count Bowyer out yet, because he thinks his Prius is capable of changing minds.

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Here’s a lesson to the people in charge of NASCAR: Don’t call something the “Roadside Assistance 500″ unless you’re ready for 500 people needing roadside assistance.

During the final lap of Sunday’s Good Sam Roadside Assistance 500 at the Talladega Superspeedway, Tony Stewart got caught up blocking to keep his lead, cut across Michael Waltrip and not only crashed everyone in the race, but everyone in the parking lot and like half the people on the freeway. Matt Kenseth managed to avoid the wreck (“The Big One”) and win the race. NASCAR spent an hour after the finish trying to sort the final order.

If you’re the type who doesn’t really like auto racing but loves crash videos, thank you for visiting our comedy sports blog. I’d like you to enjoy the clip in your own way, but to also keep in mind that Dale Earnhardt Jr. hates you and thinks you’re a Philistine.

“It’s not safe. It’s not. It’s bloodthirsty,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “If that’s what people want, that’s ridiculous.”

“If this was what we did every week, I wouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “I’ll just put it to you that way. If this was how we raced every week, I’d find another job. That’s what the package is doing. It’s really not racing. It’s a little disappointing. It cost a lot of money right there.

“If this is how we’re going to continue to race and nothing is going to change, how about NASCAR builds the cars? It’ll save us a lot of money.”

Video of the crash is after the jump, jerk.

Additional analysis from 23rd-place finisher Clint Bowyer:

“That’s just Talladega. That’s why we all come out and watch.”

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Last night, while trying to sort through political arguments among people I follow on Twitter so I could focus on what the social media site was actually intended for – porn stars lobbying for people to vote for their Fleshlight – I noticed a Tweet from Yahoo!’s Jay Busbee about a woman who informed him about the new ink of Dale Earnhardt that she just got, as you can see in the banner image. It’s actually a little unclear, so I’ll let Jay explain it.

Screw the debate, you MUST see this tattoo on @lisa88fan of Dale Sr. looking down the stairway to heaven on Dale Jr.

That’s right, that is a full back tattoo that depicts a stairway to Heaven with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. looking up at his father, who is surrounded by either clouds or angels. Either way, that’s a pretty immense show of loyalty to one specific NASCAR brand. But then, I wouldn’t expect anything else from a woman who has “Nascar Girl” tattooed on her shoulder blade, as well as a butterfly and the moon on the other side.

Oh, and it doesn’t end there, friends. This woman also has an Earnhardt tattoo on her leg that she shared on her Twitter account.

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I’m not a big fan of NASCAR. I like making Danica Patrick jokes as much as the next guy, but my best racing memory is the time Dale Earnhardt, Sr., was on ‘King Of The Hill’, so I don’t write about it a lot. When we get a chance to talk to Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., I let Burnsy handle it.

That all being said, I had to share this clip of Dale Earnhardt, Jr., reading a letter to his 16-year old self from ‘CBS This Morning’. It’s a powerful, moving look at a guy who was born into privilege, forced to grow under one of the biggest, darkest shadows ever and brought to tears by the knowledge that he should’ve been a lot nicer to his Mom. He’s incredibly human here, and I’ll never be able to think of Dale Jr. as “the guy from commercials for products I’m not interested in” again.

Check out the video after the jump. Sorry for it being baby-sized, CBS doesn’t really operate for people our age.

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Previous ‘Sports On TV’ columns (for ‘Saved By The Bell’ and ‘Full House’) have been fun to write but a pain to suffer through for research, because seriously, have you tried watching an 8th season episode of ‘Full House’ in 2012? Those columns sorta celebrate the badness of sports on TV, and how they get shoehorned in when people run out of love triangles and job jokes don’t have anything to write about.

So it’s with great pride that I present the third ‘Sports On TV’ effort, celebrating the 25 best sports moments from one of the best and most under-appreciated animated comedies ever made, FOX’s ‘King Of The Hill’. If you haven’t seen it before or just flip past it when you’re looking for ‘Squidbillies’ episodes on Adult Swim, the show’s entire 13-season run is available on Netflix streaming and is one of the best ways to spend 130-ish hours. What made the sports on ‘King Of The Hill’ great is that they aren’t accessories to the action … they’re focal points, important or not, just like in real life.

I’m lucky to have some great guest columnists this week, so I hope you enjoy the list. And yeah, there are at least 40 other moments we could’ve included here, so consider this part 1 of an eventual 50 Greatest Sports Moments Of ‘King Of The Hill’. We’ll loop back around when I realize Golden Girls didn’t have 20 sports moments on it.

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