NASCAR has Lost Its Soul

NASCAR, for all of its identity problems, is far less of a regional sport than the NHL is.

 

NHL has much bigger northeast presense than NASCAR who has tried to gain greater access and so far failed.

Biggest event for NASCAR in NYC is their annual race week/ awards dinner held at Waldorf

 

Another possibly bullshit reason is the sheer length of the acronym.

Acronyms are supposed to be short.

NASCAR loves its acronym because it stands out in print like nothing else. It practically screams in headlines. And it's so damn long that nobody calls it by its letters . . . which is the purpose of having acronyms.

NYT may be saying, "if you won't shorten it, we'll cut it down to size."

What NASCAR is trying to do with that wordy acronym is much like the guys in the Yellow Pages who call their plumbing company "A AAACHEN Plumbing" . . . just so they can be the first listing.

 

Everyone was aware, of course, that as of last season, we were supposed to start calling their championship series the NEXTEL CUP? All caps.

F-that. LMAO.

 

Maybe so, Boom, but in the South, it's more than inverted.

Count the number of NASCAR decals on cars and souvenir T-shirts and jackets and compare them to the number of fans for the Carolina Hurricanes, Atlanta Thrashers, Nashville Predators among the other hockey organizations in the South - or the traditional market fans displaced to the region, for that matter.

The difference is staggering. The race fans would lap the hockey following, and there aren't enough yellow flags and lucky dogs to offset this disparity.

 

Petty had the best quote in the USA Today story, too, and it gets to what I think is the heart of the matter, oversaturation: "I'm an idiot, and this is all I've ever done, but my God, 36 freaking races a year? Even I'm not going to tune in every week."

Now, all the Busch Series races, I believe, are on Fox and cable.

There's only so much air you can pump into that tire.

 

A sport that turns its back on its own history, as NASCAR did dumping when it dumped Rockingham and moved Darlington from Labor Day weekend, is a sport asking for trouble.
On the other hand, NASCAR is still enormously popular. No huiman endeavor enjoys endless growth.

 

Bullfuckingshit.

Dale Earnhardt.

Seventeen years ago, nobody gave a shit about Jeff Gordon outside of the USAC tracks. Even as a Cup rookie, he was still more a "who?" than a "Oh yeah, him." He didn't have the recognition Tony Stewart did as a rookie because Stewart accomplished significantly more in the open wheel ranks.

NASCAR's rise in the 1980s and 1990s can be traced directly to Earnhardt. Its current decline can be traced directly to the moment Earnhardt died at Daytona.

 

Tony Stewart would have.

(At least, he would have had the Times interviewed him.)

No mention of anybody named Earnhardt, either. Two key mistakes by Juliet Macur, who of all people should know better than that.

 

I miss Dale Earnhardt, Sr. Talk about a guy who did his thing and didn't give a shit what anyone else thought. What happened to guys like that? I wonder how he would have handled the crossover shit. I'd like to think he still would have done his thing, but these days, with all the money, who knows?

 

Actually, wasn't there a spike in interest after Earnhardt died? Certainly, NASCAR did all it could to milk his legacy, almost as much as the Cubs have done with Harry Caray.

Earnhardt drove for years, and nobody north of Paducah gave two shits. Jeff Gordon winning at the inaugural Brickyard was huge for NASCAR's crossover -- a northern driver winning at a track at least people who had never followed racing had heard of.