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Indy 500 ... irrelevant?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by spnited, May 12, 2007.

  1. Sxysprtswrtr

    Sxysprtswrtr Active Member

    Auto?
    Just checkin' - you're comparing that to NASCAR, midgets, USAC, dirt track, etc., right?
     
  2. Hank_Scorpio

    Hank_Scorpio Active Member

    A little off track here (sorry that I can't stay on topic, boots).

    I was at a paper where one of the news writers would always go down to Indy and write a column. He enjoyed doing it. Good guy too, altho his columns were almost always the same.

    Anyway, he'd always lug his manual typewriter out and write his column on that and then dictate back to the office. This was around the time of the Trash-80s.
     
  3. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    Bubbler, I agree the C-list celebrity thing is a joke (Tony George won't pay to get celebrities -- what a shocker). But don't you start knockin' Jim Nabors. When he's dead and gone and no longer singing "Indiana," even you will say, "You know, it's just not the same with Gomer." I mean, the guy came only a few months after a frickin' liver transplant to sing it. You gotta respect that.
     
  4. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    With the assist from Roger Penske...
     
  5. IU90

    IU90 Member

    Indy Racing, Boxing, and Hockey seem to have been the 21st Century's three biggest victims falling from major to significantly more minor sports, increasingly replaced by NASCAR, ultimate fighting, and reality TV (or whatever, does anybody pay attention to the NHL anymore?) in the public's awareness. I also remember when the Indy 500 was just about the biggest sporting event in the country, perhaps behind only the Super Bowl and World Series, and Pole Day was also considered major. Those days are just fading memories of the past now.
     
  6. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    Yeah, it's tough to knock Jim Nabors, especially among us Hoosiers. Plus, frankly, "Back Home Again in Indiana" isn't exactly the liveliest song ever written. It's really best sung by someone over 60.

    Bubbler, your point about the Indy infield was OK but unrealistic. It wasn't going to remain a nudist debauchery colony into this century. The track has kind of given it back to the riffraff though for a few hours on Carb Day, hiring big-name music (this year is Kid Rock, insert joke here) and turning its back on drunken behavior. I have no idea how that really helps the race; they could announce that Sam Hornish is turning 240 mph laps and most of the drunken young'uns wouldn't leave the stage area. Then again, I took a break from writing last year by walking onto a press box balcony, and upon looking down I saw two girls flashing their guy friends. So yeah-rah Carb Day.
     
  7. wickedwritah

    wickedwritah Guest

    The fact that Eddie Flippin' Cheever won the 500 during those lost years says it all.

    And I think there are go-karts out there more sophisticated technically than current IRL cars.
     
  8. spnited

    spnited Active Member

    Explain the Penske role in this to me, slappy.
     
  9. CollegeJournalist

    CollegeJournalist Active Member

    Why the hell not? You ever been to the infield at the Kentucky Derby?
     
  10. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    NASCAR? OK.

    Ultimate fighting? No. It's a niche just like X Games is/was a niche. If you listened to the X Games advocates of the 90s, it was supposed to have passed baseball, basketball, etc., in popularity by now.

    Reality TV? What the hell are you talking about?

    CJ answered this for me. If Indy's infield was as it was in the late 80s and before, it would still be a drunken madhouse. As the Derby still is now.
     
  11. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    There's something to be said for the cleanup of the Indy infield killing attendance on non-race days. I think it's safe to say that, oh, 95 percent of people there on pole day were there for the party. Now that most of the infield has seats, and the areas that don't being designated as nonalcohol "family seating" areas, that scene and crowd have been sliced considerably. That said, I think those of us who saw the days of the Snake Pit are blase about what goes on there now, but you bring people to the infield for the first time, and they get bug-eyed at what Buzzweiser can bring out in rednecks and college students.
     
  12. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    Penske was the leader of the owners' revolt that formed CART in 1979, as well as the power behind putting the Michigan race on directly against Indy in the early days of the split. There has long been no love lost between the Hulman/George family and Penske. Ten years ago, I was there to interview George and Leo Mehl about the former Goodyear tire guy's hiring as an IRL muckety-muck, and as I waited, Penske appeared on the big screen. George walked in the room, and everyone tensed up, and George wouldn't even look at the screen. Mehl, bless his heart, walked in next, looked at the screen, waved his right hand, and yelled, "Hi, Roger!"
     
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