I only casually watch Supercross racing, as I’m mainly a road race fanatic. When I do watch off-road racing, I generally prefer rally, dirt track or motocross. However, with all the hype lately, I had to tune into ESPN2 and watch the opener of the AMA Supercross season in Anaheim. What I saw was a series organizer’s wet dream!

The field is incredibly deep. It was only a few years ago when LaRocco, Tortelli, Vuilliemin and Pastrana were headliners, last week they weren’t expected to break into the top five. McGrath is back, Carmichael versus Reed, Bubba on a 250, four stroke versus two stroke and with the opening race, deciding who could survive the mud. Jeez, how could you not get someone excited about this race?

Better yet, I think Anaheim raised as many questions as it answered so the series can keep the wave of hype going for another week. This may be the best publicity situation the AMA has found itself in for nearly a decade in any of their series. The first thing that was shown was that all the talk about the Big Five (McGrath, Carmichael, Reed, Stewart and Windham) was right on the money. All five showed their stuff at Anaheim. It also showed that the 450cc four strokes may be a serious threat in a series with “250″ right in the title. Surely that raises some eyebrows, just as the 250 four stroke domination in the ?125″ class has done.

But all that mud also meant any results have a question mark next to it which won’t be answered until this coming weekend. Does Windham really have what it takes to win? Is Stewart going to crash or step up? Does McGrath have what it takes to run with the young guns on a dry track? Can Reed back his championship against Carmichael? Did the four stroke only shine because of its power delivery in the mud?

I might even tune in this weekend to find out…

[image from AMA Motocross/Supercross web site]