Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

The “Can’t See the Forest For the Trees” award goes to Miami Herald columnist Israel Gutierrez, who said on ESPN Sunday that, in his opinion, the National Basketball Association may be the new national pastime.
The NBA?
The league is in lockout mode now, and if it stays that way for five years, will more than, say, 10 percent of the country even notice?
Gutierrez still must be jazzed from the Heat’s championship run last month, when Miami lost the title to Dallas. In Miami, the NBA is all the rage because of LeBron and Dwayne, and also because, well, the other pro teams that play there are the Dolphins, the Marlins and the Panthers.
The latter three haven’t been a murder’s row of playoff excellence in recent years.
The NBA puffed out its chest during the regular season when the TV ratings spiked in the 20 percent range – to 1.5 per game – during its TNT cable broadcasts. It did about a 1.3 on ESPN. That’s a viewership of maybe 2 million per game.
The NBA Finals ratings also were up, hitting a 12.6 for Game 6.
That puts the NBA fully within range of slumping American Idol or Pawn Stars, but laughably far behind the nation’s real pastime, the NFL.
The last Super Bowl, between the Packers and Steelers, drew a 47 rating and 71 share.
That translated into 111 million viewers, a record for any televised show in the U.S. About 162 million, more than half of the country’s population, tuned in for at least part of the Super Bowl.
Last fall, 28 of the 30 highest-rated TV shows were NFL broadcasts.
Go ahead and jiggle the numbers and add qualifiers, but no matter how you slice it, the NFL is the pro league that matters in the USA.
And that isn’t going to change anytime soon, except maybe in Miami or Oklahoma City.
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Maybe it’s time to ask the question: Is NASCAR trying to kill superspeedway racing?
The Coke Zero 400 pulled a 3.1 TV rating Saturday night, down about 15 percent from last year’s 3.6. The backstretch grandstands at Daytona were empty.
Maybe the two-car “lovebug” racing  that evolved this season at the big tracks isn’t working for you, either?
The long-train drafts that dominated on the big tracks over the past decade were annoying, but nothing like this.
The sport’s biggest star, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. was exasperated Saturday.
He literally begged the media to blast the racing style that forces the cars to pair off with the driver in the rear car relegated to driving blind around the track at 190 mph, with zero chance to pass for a win.
“What kind of move can you make? I mean, Jesus, man. What kind of freakin’ move can you make racing like this?” Little E, who won the race 10 years ago, said. “There are no moves to make. You’re just holding on trying not to wreck each other, and we saw how good we are at that.”
Two pileups, involving many of the most popular drivers, marred the finish of the race, won by David Ragan.
Not sure what the solution is, but unless the NASCAR honchos figure it out soon, the Daytona 500 next year might draw more lovebugs than race fans.
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Congratulations to Joey Chestnut for putting away 62 hot dogs in 10 minutes to win his fifth straight Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island.
But is Chestnut’s record forever tainted because six-time Nathan’s champ Takeru Kobayashi has been banned for the past two years?
Kobayashi won’t sign a contract with Major League Eating and is barred from Coney Island. He wolfed down 69 dogs at a site in Manhattan during the Nathan’s contest Monday, breaking Chestnut’s 2009 record of 68.
It’s bad enough that we may not have an NFL or NBA season.
Can’t we at least have a Top Dog?