If it ain't broke, fix it anyway: NASCAR 2017 Thread

Kyle Petty's annual charity motorcycle tour went right through our coverage area during an off week in the middle of the summer of 2008. He was a little surprised that I didn't have a smartphone (I think I was going off hand-taken notes that day) but was fairly genial considering he was getting shoved out of the car for the last time over the course of that season.

 

I think they're also one of the first sports to feel the effects of pricing out their fans. Tickets might still be affordable, but the associated costs and aggravation of driving to a track, paying jacked-up hotel rates, spending even more money on food and everything else, has just gotten to be too much for a fan base that was probably already on the lower end of the economic ladder. By the time it's all said and done you can easily spend $1,000 or more on a race weekend. When every race is on TV, it gets even easier to skip the live experience.
Football is heading in this same direction. College first, and eventually the NFL.

 

College athletic departments are going to be hammered. They are already spending every penny (and more) of the new TV money. Entire sports organizations have been operating like those NBA players we enjoy mocking who suddenly go broke after making over $100 mil over a career. You get used to living a $15 mil a year lifestyle, keeping up with the Joneses, and don't realize that $15 mil a year is going to stop - it doesn't taper off.
Those payday game checks will get smaller as more teams will travel for a paycheck (probably more than half the P5 schools)

 

I covered Loudon from its first race in the '90s through 2004 (probably peak NASCAR that year). I had some of the best journalist-subject interactions of my career there and some of the worst. But in my opinion, NASCAR's endless tinkering with its product to attain parity and to make the last races of the season the most important is what is killing it. The way to keep score changes every year. Competition caution? What the hell for? There's a sense the competition is being manipulated for artificial drama.
As for college football, I expect that by 2030, there will be 40 or so schools in four conferences and the rest will all go FCS or drop the damn sport altogether. I mean, why Rutgers? Why Iowa State? Why Wake Forest? They're not making any money. Quite the contrary.

 

Let the record show that when Junior did an appearance at a local high-end go-cart track in 2003, he was a tremendous interview. One of my most enjoyable ever. He walked all over his PR person who had told me not to ask about family matters which of course I immediately did.

 

College football is going to wound if not kill its golden goose if it ever goes to a "super league" of teams. (64 is a number tossed around a lot.) Already with SEC schedules there is some grumbling because seven of the eight league opponents never change (and for schools with an ACC rival, that's another slot locked down.) There's not enough variety to whet the appetite, and of course many of the promising non-conference games get siphoned off to NFL stadiums with triple-digit face value tickets. Things are growing stale, and if you lop off half the ecosystem it just gets worse.

 

You could cut college football down to 20-25 teams and nobody would notice. You just see less and less upward mobility (without ensuing NCAA sanctions). Some teams (usually the better funded ones) already start the season with a head start in the polls. Who knows, maybe the coming cable TV meltdown will rejuvenate the sport, spread some of the coaching talent around more (Most coordinators at big-time schools have no incentive to take a head gig at a G5 school).

 

There's going to be a tipping point where the dangers of playing competitive tackle football outweigh the advantages. At some point, either the sport changes or the talent pool of athletes willing to risk their long-term health dries up. Big-time college football and the NFL can't continue forever in what's become a "gladiator" sport.

The Zager and Evans deliciously cheesy pop song "In The Year 2525" keeps running through my head. I wonder what future generations will think about our strange crumbling coliseums and the people who attended and participated in sports designed to injure.

 

Great points, maumann. I hope the cable crash causes the NC$$ to collapse too. A lot of the sports industry needs recalibration. The concept of "student-athlete" is a really skewed joke at this point.

 

I think that tipping point is coming a lot faster than anyone is really willing to admit.

Anecdotally, less than a third of the 70 or so guys I played high school football with in the mid 90s have sons who are now playing or will play in the near future. The few whose sons are playing are overwhelmingly among the group that did not go to college.

 

Throw in the general (obviously there are exceptions) disinterest on campus by students - once the boomer generation of alumni pass on figure the donations will slow as well. Of course, that generation wasn't paying off student loans to go to a state school.
Ten years out you are looking at donations down, TV money down, attendance down....it's not a good trend.